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EDUCATION OF THE CENTRAL 
NERVOUS SYSTEM 



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EDUCATION OF THE CENTRAL 
NERVOUS SYSTEM 



A STUDY OF FOUNDATIONS, ESPECIALLY OF 
SENSORY AND MOTOR TRAINING 



BY 



REUBEN POST HALLECK, M.A. (Yale) 

Author of "Psychology and Psychic Culture" 




Wefo gork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1896 

All rights reserved 






LB/057 
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Copyright, 1896, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Novfajootj $r?33 

J. S. Cushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



" In all the higher processes of the brain we must recognize 
that, in nervous material at all events, action determines structure, 
meaning by structure molecular arrangement and disposition." 

DR. M. FOSTER, F.R.S. 

" Every cerebral element is subject to the educating influence 
of those sensory nerve fibres with which it is anatomically con- 
nected." HERING. 

" Just as muscular exercise causes an increased growth of 
muscular fibre, so regulated mental exercise must develop and 
strengthen the tissue of the brain." 

DRS. M'KENDRICK AND SNODGRASS. 

"The goal attained by the process of practice is simply the 
mechanization of movements which were originally dependent 
upon psychical antecedents. That must mean that mechanical, 
i.e. physiological, alterations are at the bottom of the whole 
matter." wundt. 

" Race, age, and previous training seem to have a marked 
effect in determining the extent and character of the reflex 
actions which the spinal cord is capable of carrying out." 

DR. M. FOSTER, F.R.S. 

" Everywhere where there is development later events are 
conditioned by earlier." hoffding. 



PREFACE 



The old theory that education consists solely in modifica- 
tions in an immaterial entity has worked untold damage. It 
was argued that the immaterial never grew old, and that it 
could be trained as well at one time as at another. From 
this mistaken notion arose such adages as, " It is never too 
late to be what you might have been." It would be nearer 
the truth to say of any creature whose higher knowledge 
rests upon sensory foundations, or, in other words, upon 
modifications in nerve cells : " It is always too late to be 
what you might have been." Education may be something 
more, as the writer believes, than modifications in the central 
nervous system, but it is also true that without these modifi- 
cations no mortal can be educated. 

If brain cells are allowed to pass the plastic stage without 
being subjected to the proper stimuli or training, they will 
never fully develop. The majority of adults have many un- 
developed spots in their brains. 

This book calls attention to the importance of early pur- 
posive training of the central nervous system while its brief 
morning of plasticity lasts. Then, and only then, can the 
nerve cells be made lifelong friends, who will take upon 
themselves the duty of pronouncing correctly, of speaking 
grammatically, of making habitually correct responses to the 



viii PREFACE 

thousand and one demands of life, while the intellectual 
powers are left free to devote their entire energies to weightier 
matters. Such nerve cells will also be ready to reproduce 
their former sensory experiences as a firm foundation for 
thinking about concrete things. Rightly trained nerve cells 
occupy a position analogous to that of a trusty servant, who, 
without being looked after, attends to all the wearying details 
of housekeeping, leaving the mistress free to entertain her 
friends and to develop her higher powers. No human being 
knows a more relentless enemy than motor nerve cells which 
have been wrongly trained early in life. Such a man may 
be worth a million, but the bad grammar will continue to flow 
automatically from the motor mechanism of speech, and to 
mortify him in good society. 

It has been known for some time that the higher processes 
of thought are dependent on modifications in brain cells, and 
that the highest intellectual superstructure can be no firmer 
than the sensory foundation, but this knowledge has not been 
properly applied in training these cells. Practical application 
of truths lags far behind a theoretical knowledge of them. 

The principal object of this book is to prescribe for our 
complex central nervous systems at the proper time the special 
kinds of exercise, sensory, motor, and ideational, demanded for 
full development. A person who has only one or even two senses 
properly trained is at best a pitiful fraction of a human being. 
The writer has endeavoured to present herewith some facts 
which every parent and teacher must know and apply in order 
to secure the fuller development of children at a critical time. 

A special feature of this work consists in showing that 
recalled images of sense objects are powerful and necessary 



PREFACE ix 

aids in further modifying and developing the sensory cells ; 
not images of sight alone, but of every sense. 

Many examples of sensory objects have been taken from 
literature to indicate the proper direction for training. Theory 
often fails because objects demanding constant practice are 
not at hand or suggested. Almost all study English literature, 
which constantly presents objects requiring sensory interpre- 
tation for their proper understanding. For this reason, numer- 
ous examples, especially from Shakspere and Milton, have been 
quoted to show how the study of literature may be made to 
react on sensory training. From long personal experience, the 
author can testify that the majority of pupils can soon be in- 
duced to seize the first opportunity to obtain definite sensory 
knowledge of any object mentioned in poetry, whether of a 
daffodil, of a murmuring pine, or of " incense-breathing morn." 
It is hoped that the chapter on " How Shakspere's Senses 
Were Trained " may be found practically serviceable in edu- 
cating the central nervous system of youth. 

It has been the aim of the author to restrict this work to 
its own proper field of training and developing the central 
nervous system, and not to offer these chapters as a substi- 
tute for the thorough study of psychology. 

Acknowledgment is made to Professor Donaldson's ex- 
cellent work, The Growth of the Brain, — although the follow- 
ing chapters do not view the subject in as fatalistic an aspect as 
that work, — and to Dr. August Schachner for much scholarly 
help in dissections of the central nervous system. 

R. P. H. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The Central Nervous System i 

CHAPTER II 
Fatalistic Aspects . .28 

CHAPTER III 
The Possible Modifications of the Brain ... 46 

CHAPTER IV 

Attention, Nutrition, and Fatigue in their Relations 

to the Central Nervous System . . . .61 

CHAPTER V 
Environment and Training 7 6 

CHAPTER VI 

I 
Age and Training 94 

CHAPTER VII 

General Sensory Training, with an Examination of 
the Character of the Sensory Images employed 
by Shakspere and Milton . . . . • .109 
xi 



xii CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VIII 

PAGE 

Special Sensory Training .130 



CHAPTER IX 
Cerebral Development by the Formation of Images . 149 

CHAPTER X 
How Shakspere's Senses were trained . . . . 171 

CHAPTER XI 
Motor Training 209 

CHAPTER XII 
The Central Nervous System and Enjoyment . . 238 

Index 253 



THE EDUCATION OF THE CENTRAL 
NERVOUS SYSTEM 

CHAPTER I 

The Central Nervous System 

Anatomical and physiological details are usually uninterest- 
ing except to physicians and to a few other specialists. It is 
the purpose of this chapter to give only those facts necessary 
to render more intelligible what we have to say about the 
training of the central nervous system. An anatomical or a 
physiological fact is utterly worthless unless it can be assimi- 
lated to other ideas to render them more clear. When we 
come to speak of undeveloped brain tracts, the terms will 
mean little, unless we can construct definite images of the 
various cerebral areas. But if we know precisely what part of 
the brain is undeveloped, the necessity for its improvement 
will be more forcibly realized, and directions for the proper 
exercise will lay a stronger hold on the attention. 

The mind insists on investing all its knowledge with two 
primal relations, those of space and time ; the where and the 
when are questions instinctively asked. A gentleman who 
had often heard the Turkish question and the approaches to 
the Black Sea discussed, was haunted by a sense of unrest 
whenever he heard the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus men- 



2 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

tioned. Occasionally the term " Hellespont" was used, and he 
did not know with which strait to identify that name. He 
was neither sure of the exact position of Constantinople, nor 
of the bodies of water which the straits connect. Finally he 
could no longer endure the mental disquiet over the igno- 
rance of the spatial relations, so he consulted an atlas, formed 
an image of a gourd with two handles, — the longer handle 
being the Dardanelles or Hellespont, the body of the gourd 
the Sea of Marmora, the shorter handle the Bosphorus, — 
and felt a sense of relief in having satisfied a primal demand 
of the mind. In the same way the mind demands a map of 
the central nervous system before remarks about developing 
certain parts can be fully realized. An idea as rude as that 
of the gourd in the case just mentioned is far better than an 
idea without form and therefore essentially void. 

When we speak of developing certain parts of the brain, 
or of lack of development in certain tracts because of defi- 
ciency of early training, we may be said to assume the theory 
of definite cerebral localization, as opposed to the dynamic or 
vibratory theory. We wish here to call attention to the fact 
that these theories, within certain limits, are not necessarily 
in conflict with each other. It may be true that certain 
dynamic combinations or vibrations in the same part of the 
brain may mean different things, just as different rates of 
vibration in the same ether may cause heat, light, and elec- 
tricity. But even dynamic combinations or differing rates of 
molecular vibration must have a local habitation in the brain. 
If any special tract is not early subjected to all the dynamic 
combinations or vibrations of which it is capable, that tract 
is in so far undeveloped. 

It may be true that the same fingers can play the piano, 
grasp a knife, lift a weight, or paint a picture, but it is also 



THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 3 

true that the muscles in the fingers cannot do the work of 
the jaws or the legs, nor can the ear take the place of the 
eye. The muscles in one part of the body may be well ex- 
ercised and strong, while those of another part may be com- 
paratively little used, and hence weak. The fact that the 
body is a unit and that the same blood courses to all parts of 
it, must not cause us to shut our eyes to these undoubted facts 
of localization of function. We know that special exercise de- 
velops special muscles. We also know that, if the sense of 
sight is trained, while hearing receives no education, the brain 
tract correlated with hearing will not be proportionately 
developed. 

As organisms grow more complex, there is more specializa- 
tion of function. Some of the lower forms of animal life may 
have what answers for a stomach wherever nutriment happens 
to come in contact with the body, but this is not true of the 
higher forms of animal life. This greater differentiation with 
advanced forms of life entails new responsibilities in demand- 
ing the proper exercise for the more complex parts, not one 
of which must be neglected. 

The best authorities agree that nerve matter shows increas- 
ing specialization with advancing intelligence. Dr. M. Foster 
says : " Thus when we survey a series of brains in succession, 
from the more lowly frog, through the bird, the rabbit, the dog, 
and other lower mammals up to the monkey, the anthropoid 
ape, and so to man himself, we find an increasing differentia- 
tion of the cerebral cortex, by which certain areas of the cortex 
are brought into special connection with certain skeletal or 
other muscles in such a way that stimulation of a particular 
portion of the gray matter gives rise to a particular movement 
and to that alone." 1 Professor Donaldson says : " Experi- 

1 Foster's Text-book of Physiology, p. 749. 



4 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

merit shows that in man the special cortical centres are some- 
what separated from one another, and this separation is due to 
masses of brain substance which do not give reactions upon 
ordinary electrical stimulation." 1 We allude to these facts 
here, since the insistence of special forms of exercise to develop 
the complex central nervous system is the chief purpose of 
this work. 

The central nervous system, which we shall now proceed to 
map out, is composed of the encephalon, or contents of the 
skull, and the spinal cord. All masses of nerve matter, as soon 
as they leave the brain or spinal cord, are called the peripheral 
nervous system. The central nervous system is therefore what 
we popularly mean by the brain and spinal cord. 

This system consists of nerve cells and fibres, the latter being 
in every case the outgrowth of cells. Different cells in varying 
parts of the body are connected by nerve fibres, in much the 
same way that New York is connected with Chicago by tele- 
graph wires. The analogy is more striking than appears at 
first sight because after nerve fibres leave a cell, they have 
never been seen, even with the strongest microscope, to enter 
another cell. There is some mysterious physiological, but no 
anatomical, connection. When a New Yorker telegraphs a 
man in Chicago, the home of the resident of Chicago may be 
at some distance from the ending of the wire. A person from 
another planet might wonder for a long time how the despatch 
could reach the person, just as we are now wondering how an 
impulse from one nerve cell reaches another. There is prob- 
ably some intermediate conductive matter which does the work 
of transmission in a way analogous to that of the telegraph boy. 

The cells of the central nervous system are chiefly composed 
of a wonderful protoplasmic matter in which minute granules 
1 Donaldson's The Growth of the Brain, p. 265. 



THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 5 

and striations can be detected. We are not acquainted with 
any substance which is more sensitive to the most delicate 
stimulation, or which better retains modifications due to past 
experience. There are instruments which can detect a change 
in the brain, caused by the passing of a cloud over the sun. 
An old man said that his brain cells still retained modifications 
from a glance at a rainbow on a certain summer's evening, 




Fig. 1. — "A group of human nerve cells drawn to scale X 200 diameters. 
A, cell from ventral horn of spinal cord ; B, cell from the spinal ganglion of 
dorsal root, with its nerve process ; C, cell from the column of Clarke ; D, soli- 
tary cell from the dorsal horn of the spinal cord ; E, cross-section of a large 
nerve fibre; F, granule cells from the cortex of the cerebellum." — DONALD- 
SON, after Waller. 

seventy years before. Man's entire central nervous system is 
computed to have at least three thousand million nerve cells. 
These vary in diameter from about %to to 35 ^0 °f an mcn - 

Nerve cells have the power of sending out processes which 
we term nerve fibres. It is their function to connect all the 
nerve cells in the various parts of the body. Just as a pros- 
perous country is threaded with telegraph wires, which keep 
all its cities aware of what is happening elsewhere, so the hu- 



6 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

man body is traversed by nerve fibres which report stimuli, 
transmit impulses to movement, and perform various other 
offices connected with the nutrition, circulation, and secretions 
of the body. Some idea of the fineness of these fibres may 
be gained from the number of sensory nerves that end in the 
brain. Specialists estimate this number at not less than two 
and one-half millions. 

There are two classes of nerve fibres, afferent and efferent, 
those concerned in transmitting stimuli of any kind to the cen- 
tral nervous system and those engaged in bringing impulses 
from it. We are here concerned with only one species of the 
class of afferent nerves ; namely, sensory nerves. These transmit 
any kind of sensory stimulation, such as sound, light, or odour. 
The only species of efferent nerves in which we are at present 
interested are motor nerves, or those which transmit impulses 
to move the muscles. Our entire intellectual life rests on a 
foundation of sensation and movement. 

As soon as we have a sensory nerve leading to a nerve cell, 
in the spinal cord, for instance, and a motor nerve issuing from 
the same' cell, we have the elements concerned in reflex action, 
which is so important in human life and education. Reflex 
action is simply a sensory impulse turned back along a motor 
nerve by a nerve cell. If we touch or slightly pinch the hand 
of a sleeper, it will be withdrawn without his waking. A sen- 
sory nerve reports the stimulus to a nerve cell in the spinal 
cord, and this cell changes the direction of the impulse, sending 
it back along a motor nerve to the muscles concerned in mov- 
ing the hand and causing contraction in them. Reflex action 
may take place without consciousness or brain intervention. 
Were it not for reflex action, we could make but comparatively 
little progress in life. We should then be in a position similar 
to that of the manager of an industrial concern, who could not 



THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 7 

answer a single letter or transact any business by deputy. 
He could do no more business than his limited time would 
allow him to oversee personally. Reflex action is the deputy 
of the brain, and directs myriad movements, thus leaving the 
higher powers free to attend to weightier things. Nerve action 
of this kind is so very important that we shall consider it at 
greater length in the next chapter. Suffice it for the present 
to say that so great a physiologist as Dr. M. Foster declares 
that reflex action can be modified by training. 

Thus far we have been considering the units common to the 
entire central nervous system, — nerve cells and their out- 
growth, nerve fibres. We may now consider the individual 
members of this system, and turn our attention first to the 
spinal cord, the great organ of reflex action. 

The spinal vertebrae pass down the rear median part of the 
trunk of the body for about a foot and a half, and enclose a 
remarkable cord of nervous matter. The spinal cord is com- 
posed of a gray and a white substance, and, like the brain, is 
almost divided into two parts. Two deep fissures, an anterior 
and a posterior, nearly meet, leaving two crescents of gray 
matter connected by a narrow bar. 

The spinal cord gives off thirty-one pairs of nerves which 
supply the trunk and limbs. The nerves leave each half of 
the spinal cord in pairs, passing out from the tip of each cres- 
cent of gray matter. The anterior and the posterior bundles 
of nerves combine to form one nerve trunk, soon after leav- 
ing the spinal cord. 

The motor nerves leave by the anterior horns, the sensory, 
by the posterior horns, of gray matter. The motor nerves pass 
to the muscles and transmit to them incentives to movement. 
The sensory nerves extend to the skin. There is probably not 
a city in the world that has as many telegraph wires entering 



8 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

it as there are nerves in the spinal cord, leading to the brain. 
The anterior roots of a frog's spinal nerve were found by actual 
count to contain from 5,000 to 11,000 separate nerve fibres, 
the number varying with the size and age of the frog. When 
the cord is sufficiently injured, the portions of the body sup- 




Fig. 2. — Different aspects of sections of the spinal cord and of the roots of 
the spinal nerves from the cervical region : 1, different views of anterior 
median fissure ; 2, posterior fissure ; 3, anterior lateral depression, for anterior 
roots ; 4, posterior lateral depression, for posterior roots ; 5 and 6, anterior and 
posterior roots, respectively; 7, complete spinal nerve, formed by the union 
of the anterior and posterior roots. — HALLECK's Psychology, from ALLEN 
Thompson. 

plied with nerves leaving the cord below the seat of the injury 
suffer both motor and sensory paralysis. Such a limb would 
have no power to move, and it might be sawed off without pain. 
The brain's chief deputy is the spinal cord, which, through its 
powers of reflex action, attends to much of the routine business 



THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 9 

of the body, leaving the energy of the brain more free to 
expend itself in other directions. 

Passing next to the encephalon, or contents of the skull, we 
may distinguish between the medulla oblongata, the cerebellum, 
and the cerebrum. These three form the major divisions of 
the contents of the skull. There are in addition some smaller 
basal ganglia, which it is not necessary to describe here. 

The medulla oblongata is really the enlarged upper end of 
the spinal cord. The medulla, which is only about an inch 
and a quarter long, is an organ of greater complexity than 
the spinal cord and is capable of a greater variety of ac- 
tions. The innumerable fibres from the cord pass through 
it, and many of them here decussate, or cross to the opposite 
side. Thus, a motor fibre in connection with the right foot 
would pass over into the left half of the medulla and end in 
the left side of the brain. Reflex centres of a high order are 
found in the medulla. 

Next comes the cerebellum, or little brain, which is situated 
at the rear part of the base of the cerebrum, or larger brain. 
The cerebellum is concerned in some unknown way with co- 
ordinating the muscles and balancing the body. If we could, 
with an eye manifold finer than the finest microscope, look at 
the cerebellum of a man staggering under the effects of strong 
drink, we should probably be able to find traces of disorder there. 

The cerebrum occupies the upper part of the skull. It is 
not necessary for our purpose to know all the minute anatomy 
of the brain, but we must so map it out as to be able to under- 
stand what is meant by the development of its various parts. 

The brain is divided into two symmetrical hemispheres, the 
right and the left. 

The first landmarks to be learned on the outer surface of the 
brain are the fissure of Rolando and the fissure of Sylvius. The 



10 



EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



fissure of Rolando extends from the middle upper part of the 
brain downward and forward, passing a little in front of the 
ear, and stopping before reaching the fissure of Sylvius. This 
latter fissure begins at the base of the brain and runs back- 




Fig. 3. — Diagrammatic view of the left cerebral hemisphere, showing the 
four lobes, the two principal fissures, the cerebellum, and the medulla oblongata. 



ward and upward, at an acute angle with the base of the brain 
(see Fig. 3). 

There are on the outer lateral surface of each hemisphere 
four lobes or major divisions of the brain. These lobes are in 
turn subdivided by smaller fissures into various convolutions. 



THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



IE 



The four lobes are placed as follows : The frontal lobe is 
that portion of the cortex of the front of the brain extending 
backward to the fissure of Rolando, and downward to the 
base of the brain and the fissure of Sylvius. The parietal 
lobe is that portion of the brain immediately behind Rolando, 
extending downward to Sylvius and backward to the parieto- 
occipital fissure (marked P. O. F. in Fig. 3). The occipital 




Fig. 4. — Showing the chief convolutions on the lobes of the lateral surface 
of the left hemisphere of the brain. 

lobe extends from the parietal down to the base of the brain. 
The temporal lobe lies below Sylvius and extends backward to 
an ill-defined boundary between the parietal and the occipital 
lobes, and downward to the base of the brain. 

Each of the lobes we have been considering is divided by 
fissures into more or less distinct convolutions. For instance, 
the frontal lobe is divided into the first, second, third, and 
ascending frontal convolutions. The position of the most 



12 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

important lateral convolutions may be seen by referring to 
Fig. 4. 

The convolutions of the inner halves of the hemispheres are 
not so easily understood without a model. Figure 8, p. 18, 
shows as well as a diagram can the leading mesial convolutions. 

Our next step is to determine what parts of the brain are 
exercised by the various sensory and motor stimuli of life. 
We can then attach some definite meaning to an undeveloped 
brain spot, — give it a local habitation and a name. 

Localization of brain function has only recently been dem- 
onstrated. There is nothing surprising in the fact that differ- 
ent parts of the brain should have different functions. We 
might infer in advance that such would probably prove to be 
the case. Dr. Michael Foster says of the human body as it 
develops, "Some cells put on certain characters, and others 
other characters ; that is to say, the cells undergo histological 
differentiation. . . . 

" This histological differentiation is accompanied by a physi- 
ological division of labour. . . . Instead of all the units as in 
the amoeba doing the same things equally well, the units of 
one tissue are told off as it were to do one thing especially 
well, or especially fully, and thus the whole labour of the body 
is divided among the several tissues." 1 

One of the important functions of the brain is to send out 
automatic motor impulses. We decide to pick up a pen, to 
move a foot, to utter a word, and we voluntarily innervate a 
certain portion of the brain. If the nerves leading from this 
to the proper muscles are unimpaired, the motion follows. The 
motor functions of the brain are the most accurately localized 
of all. 

The motor zone is that part of the brain adjacent to the 

1 Foster's Text-book of Physiology, p. 6. 



THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



13 



fissure of Rolando. If we were to take a monkey, and remove 
the skull over the fissure of Rolando for a short distance on 
both sides of it, we should expose the motor zone. We could 
prove this by exciting various portions of this tract with an 
electric current. If the brain at the extreme upper portion of 
Rolando was excited, the monkey's leg would be moved. If 
the current was confined to a certain small part of this area 




Fig. 5. — Lateral surface of a monkey's brain, showing the motor centres. - 
Halleck's Psychology, from HORSLEY and Schafer. 



(see Fig. 5), only a toe might be flexed. Repeated experi- 
ments were successful in mapping out a motor region so exact 
that such small centres as those concerned in moving a thumb 
or contracting the larynx have been located. While it is true 
that these areas were originally localized on the monkey's 
brain by stimulating different points with electricity, there is 
sufficient similarity between the human and the simian brain, 



H 



EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



to warrant locating the principal areas in corresponding places 
on the human brain. The chief fissures are the same in both 
brains. Of course, human beings cannot be directly experi- 
mented with in this way, but monkeys have been especially 
serviceable to human beings along this line. 

A few years ago the boldest surgeon would have hesitated to 
cut into the brain, even when there were symptoms that some- 



Line points to 
issure of Rolando 




Fig. 6. — Diagram of motor localization in the human brain. 

thing serious must be the matter with it. In the last decade 
of the nineteenth century a physician can write, " When I say 
that the existence of a tumour about the size of the end of the 
forefinger can be diagnosticated, and that before touching the 
head it should be said (and I was present when the statement 
was made) that it was a small tumour, that it did not lie on the 
surface of the brain, but a little underneath it, and that it lay 
partly under the centre for the face and partly under that for 



THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 1 5 

the arm in the left side of the brain, and that the man was 
operated on, and the tumour found exactly where it was be- 
lieved to be, with perfect recovery of the patient, it is some- 
thing which ten years ago would have been deemed the art of 
a magician rather than the cold precision of science." 1 

In the case of an epileptic patient, it was noticed that a 
preliminary twitching always began in the left shoulder. The 
surgeons cut a circular hole through the right side of the 
skull immediately over the shoulder centre. Beneath the in- 
cision they found a small tumour, which they removed. A 
sewing-girl was subject to fits of epilepsy, and it was observed 
that the preliminary convulsive twitching always began in the 
right thumb. The surgeons cut through the skull directly 
over the motor centre for the hand. They then stimulated 
the brain cortex until they found a surface where the thumb 
alone was flexed. It was necessary to determine this point 
accurately, for if the brain beyond this was injured, the hand 
and entire arm would be paralyzed, and the poor sewing- 
girl could then no longer earn her living. The surgeons suc- 
ceeded in removing the thumb centre alone, and, as a result 
of the operation, her epileptic attacks were fewer and milder 
in number. She also had the use of her hand. 

The important motor centre for speech lies in the third left 
frontal convolution for right-handed people, and in the corre- 
sponding convolution on the right side of the brain in the 
case of those left-handed (see Fig. 6). When we wish to 
talk, we must innervate that portion of the brain. If a per- 
son understands what is said to him, but is unable to control 
his organs of speech so as to reply, he is said to be suffering 
from motor aphasia. Since the centre for hearing lies in a 
different part of the brain, the unfortunate may understand 
l Vivisection a?id Brain Surgery, by W. W. Keen, M.D. 



EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



everything that is said to him and yet be unable to utter a 
word in reply. If his hand centre is unimpaired, he may 
write answers to questions as well as ever. No one can be 
an intelligent student of memory if he does not know such 
facts as these. 

We must now consider in what part of the brain the various 
nerves of the special senses discharge the stimulus which they 




Fig. 7. — Side view of left hemisphere of human brain, showing the princi- 
pal localized areas. — HALLECK'S Psychology. 

bring. We shall find the sensory areas less definitely mapped 
out than the motor tracts. We have, however, evidence which 
shows that each sense has its headquarters in some special 
part or parts of the brain. We must, nevertheless, bear in 
mind that no part of the brain is absolutely restricted to 
either motor or sensory nerves. We name the tract from the 
predominance of the nerves which end there, just as we call 
Paris a 'French city, although there is also dwelling in it a 
sprinkling of people from other nations. 



M THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 1 7 

The centre for sight lies in the occipital lobes, both on their 
exterior and mesial surfaces, and it sometimes extends as far 
up as the end of the fissure of Sylvius (see Fig. 7). When 
the cortex has been peeled off this part of a monkey's brain, 
the animal is blind. Injuries to this part of the human brain 
have resulted in more or less complete loss of sight. Investi- 
gations in this field have enabled us to distinguish between 
psychic and sensorial blindness. Psychic blindness is lack of 
recognition of an object that is actually seen. Thus, when the 
brain of a frog- or a pigeon is removed, the animal may still 
see objects and avoid them when it moves. But the fact that 
such a pigeon has no fear of a cat or any other object shows 
that psychic blindness exists. Objects are seen, but not rec- 
ognized. Sensorial blindness exists when no sensation from 
light is experienced. A Scotchman met with an accident that 
brought on him psychic blindness. He saw physically as well 
as ever, but he could not interpret what he saw. He would 
look at the most familiar objects and be utterly unable to rec- 
ognize them. He would gaze at his New Testament without 
knowing what the object was until he ran his hand over the 
smooth cover, when he immediately recognized it. When a 
piece of detached bone, pressing on the centre for vision in 
his brain, was removed, he recovered his power of mentally 
interpreting what he saw. 

Taste and smell are both probably located under the tip of 
the temporal lobe, in a convolution known by the name of 
either the hippocampal or uncinate gyrus (see Fig. 8). All 
the evidence for hearing points to its location in the rear two- 
thirds of the first and second temporal convolutions. When 
this lobe has been diseased, the patients have been more or 
less deaf or unable to understand what is said to them. 

When we come to localize touch, we are met with peculiar 
c 



1 8 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

difficulties, owing partly to almost innumerable tactile nerves 
which pour into the brain. Dr. Foster thus expresses the 
most probable conclusions reached, " The removal of a motor 
area, that, for instance, of the hand, entails not only loss of 
movement in the hand, but also loss or impairment of sensa- 
tion in the hand. ... So that the evidence seems con- 



Fissure of 
Rolando 




Fig. 8. — Localized sensory areas on mesial side of the right cerebral hemi- 
sphere, where it faces the left hemisphere. 



vincing that the parietal region of the cortex, while it has 
special connections with voluntary movements, has at the 
same time special connections with cutaneous and other sen- 
sations. . . . Other observers, again, have found that in the 
monkey, removal or destruction of the gyrus fornicatus on the 
mesial surface of the brain . . . has brought the whole of 
the opposite side of the body to a condition which has been 



THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 1 9 

described as an anaesthesia, that is a loss of all cutaneous 
tactile sensations, and an analgesia, that is a loss of sensations 
of pain." 1 

After we have mapped out the brain to the extent of our 
ability, there yet remains the larger portion to which we can 
assign no definite function of any kind. Imagination, thought, 
emotion, and will have never been localized. No one has ever 
made it clear how mere brain cells can imagine or think. If 
we are to locate memory, thought, and feeling, at all, we must 
say that the entire brain is their organ. The Bpinal cord is 
certainly an organ of reflex memory. Thought must use the 
data supplied by all the senses localized in different parts of 
the brain. The phrenological folly of locating memory in any 
one " bump " or part of the brain is apparent. We have seen 
that the physical basis for the memory of sight is in the occipi- 
tal lobe j of hearing, in the temporal j of smell and taste, 
probably in the gyrus hippocampus; of touch and general 
sensibility, in different parts of the brain ; of motion, in various 
areas. When asked in what part of the brain memory is 
located, the proper reply is, "Memory of what? — of sight, 
sound, or some other sense; or of the motor function?" 

We may sum up the question of cortical localization by say- 
ing hypothetically with Dr. M'Kendrick, "The frontal lobes 
appear to have to do with cognition and intellectual action. 
If so, the gray matter on the surface of the brain may be 
mapped out into three great areas, — an area concerned in 
cognitions and volitions in front, a motor or ideo-motor area 
in the middle, and a sensory area behind. These distinctions 
are no doubt arbitrary to a considerable extent ; but if they are 
retained as the expressions of a working hypothesis, they are 
of service." 

1 Foster's Textbook of Physiology, pp. 799, 8op T 



20 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

We have by experimenting on the various sensory nerves 
learned some important facts about different brain tracts. 
Each sensory area reacts in terms of its own individuality 
upon any incoming stimuli. When a stimulus reaches the 
temporal lobes, there is a sensation of sound. If a like stimu- 
lus affects the occipital lobes, a sensation of light is experienced. 
If a stimulus like those which have caused sensations of light 
and sound is applied to the motor area of the arm, that will 
be moved. It will be noticed what powerful bearings these 
experiments have on the old-time metaphysical doctrines of 
realism. Professor Ladd says that Du Bois Reymond "showed 
that when a chain of four persons is arranged in such manner 
as to send a current of electricity through the tongue of one, 
the eyeball of another, and the muscles of a frog preparation 
held by two of the four, the same current will cause simulta- 
neously an acid taste, a flash of light, and a movement of the 
animal's muscles." 1 

Each sensory brain area exists for the purpose of receiving 
the proper stimuli from the external world. These centres 
must remain comparatively undeveloped if they are not prop- 
erly exercised. Our knowledge of localization enables us to 
appreciate more fully the important practical bearings of 
this passage from Drs. M'Kendrick and Snodgrass : " The 
sensorium does not act as a whole, but is differentiated, so 
that one part is devoted to one sense, another to another ; 
and when the nerves which lead to these nerve centres have 
been stimulated, it matters not what the nature of the stimulus 
to the nerve has been, the sensation experienced is always for 
each centre of one and the same kind. Thus the optical 
centre always gives rise to the sensation of seeing something, 
the auditory nerve to that of hearing, the olfactory centre to 

1 Ladd's Elements of Physiological Psychology, p. 313. 



THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 21 

sensations of smell, the gustatory centre to those of taste, and 
. the tactile centre to touch." 1 

It should be noted that in mapping out the various convo- 
lutions and motor and sensory areas, we have been considering 
only the cortex or external covering of gray matter. This 
cortex, in which human consciousness is supposed to reside, is 
the extremely thin outer covering of the brain, varying from -jL 
to i of an inch in thickness. Experts variously estimate the 
number of cells in this cortex at from one to two thousand 
millions. Hence we see that the most varied mental attain- 
ments may have a sufficient number of physical elements to 
accompany them. Professor HorTding rightly says, "When we 
reflect that any excitation works through the release of tension 
in organic cells, and that the result of this release in the indi- 
vidual cell may be connected in the cerebrum with results 
similarly obtained from millions of other cells, we grow giddy 
at the thought of the combinations which are possible." 2 

The interior of the brain is a mass of connective fibres. For 
the brain to act as a unit, all the convolutions and cells must 
be in more or less immediate connection. 

We must now consider a third kind of localization, as im- 
portant as either the motor or the sensory type. We may 
term this third kind associational localization. It is plain that 
if we see ourselves on the point of stepping into water or in 
danger of being run over, there must be, first, some means 
whereby the excitement in the retina can reach the cells in the 
occipital lobes; secondly, some way in which the tension in 
these cells can be communicated to the motor area for the leg; 
and, thirdly, a connection between these motor cells and our 
legs, which are to obey nervous impulses to move us out of 
harm's way. 

1 Physiology of the Senses, p. 2. 2 Hoffding's Outlines of Psychology, p. 40. 



22 



EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



The interior of the brain is a mass of connective nerve fibres. 
There are three kinds of these, — projection, commissural, and 
association fibres. The projection fibres project, so to speak, 
upon the cortex of the brain the results of sensory stimuli upon 
the body. The nearest figurative illustration that we can give 
of this action is the projection of a figure upon a screen by a 




Fig. 9. —The projection fibres in the brain. — STARR. 



magic lantern apparatus. Here the screen corresponds to the 
brain cortex; the rays of light on their way to the screen 
represent the sensory impulse in course of transmission by the 
fibres ; and the picture on the screen stands for the result of 
the stimulus. Of course such an illustration is not literally true ; 
but it has analogical truth, and it enables us to see the necessity 



THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



23 



for three different elements in each case. There are also 
motor projection fibres, which project the stimuli from certain 
motor areas upon the proper muscles to move them. In this 
case, the muscles become the screen on which the motor cells 
focus their power. 

In the above figure, A is placed on the projection fibres from 
the frontal lobes; B, on the fibres from the motor zone on 
either side of the fissure of Rolando ; C represents the sensory 
tract for touch ; D, the fibres leading from the optic nerves to 
the occipital lobes ; E, the fibres from the auditory nerves ex- 
tending to the temporal lobes. K indicates the place in the 
medulla oblongata where the fibres decussate or cross over to 
the opposite side. Hence the right leg would have its motor 
centre on the left hemisphere of the brain. 

It will be noticed that the fibres in projecting themselves 
on the cortex of the brain spread out like a fan. Where they 
leave the skull they are obliged to contract into a bundle be- 
cause of the narrow passage-ways. 

We should endeavour to construct as definite images as we 
can of the physical accompaniments of mental action. If we 
do not, our ideas will be not only indistinct, but in a short time 
they will pass completely from the memory. We must remem- 
ber that every stimulus of sufficient intensity is transmitted by 
the projection fibres of the special senses to the fitting tracts in 
the cortex of the brain. From the motor areas pass out pro- 
jection fibres to the muscles throughout the body, whether to 
those controlling the vocal cords or a toe. 

The commissural fibres are those which join like parts of the 
two hemispheres, and enable them to work in unison. For 
instance, there pass from the frontal lobes in the right hemi- 
sphere a set of fibres to the corresponding lobes in the left 
hemisphere. 



24 



EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



We now come to the third class, the association fibres, the 
most important for the psychologist. These fibres connect 
different convolutions in the same hemisphere. 

Were it not for the existence of these fibres, perception, 
memory, and thought would be impossible. Our perception 
of a pear is incomplete until we have fused into one mental 




Fig. 10. — Side view of a hemisphere of the human brain, showing fibres 
associating the different tracts. " A, between adjacent convolutions ; B, be- 
tween frontal and occipital areas; D, between frontal and temporal areas; 
67V, caudate nucleus ; O T, optic thalamus." — Starr. 



whole the sensations from tasting, smelling, seeing, touching, 
and hearing the fruit fall from the tree. The optic nerves 
pour their stimuli into cells in one part of the brain ; the audi- 
tory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory, into still other parts. If 
there were no means of connecting these, the knowledge com- 
ing from the different senses could never be fused. The sensa- 
tion from seeing a pear would be in one inaccessible territory 
by itself; that from tasting the fruit, in another. Memory 



THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



25 



would also be impossible, for here we proceed by association 
from one idea to another. The fibres furnish the physical 
basis of association. In thought, we need to have all our 
knowledge associated. In that peculiar form of brain injury 
which entails psychic or " soul " blindness, an object may be 
physically seen as well as ever, but such sight means nothing in 
the way of knowledge. A man in such a condition might see 
a precipice, and yet, failing to connect it with similar objects 
in the past, walk straight over the brink. We shall see later 
that these associative fibres probably increase in number as 
the individual grows older and connects his knowledge by 
thought relations. We see no reason for disagreeing with 
Dr. Flatau, who says : " The main function of the association 
fibres is probably psychical. They appear the most fitted to 
form the anatomical basis for the association processes of 
perception, thought, and will." 1 

Although the play of powers like imagination and thought 
may seem too airy to have any physical substrate, it is a proved 
fact that all forms of mental exercise produce a rise of cerebral 
temperature. Whenever we perceive a ruddy cloud or a blos- 
soming orchard, whenever we experience a wave of feeling, 
build an air castle, or form a decision, up goes the temperature 
of the brain. If a supply of blood went to the brain in propor- 
tion to its weight compared with the rest of the body, the brain 
would get but one forty-fifth of the sum total. As the case 
stands, one- eighth goes to the brain. This indicates broadly 
the work which it is required to perform. Persons have been 
placed in a horizontal position on balances so accurate that a 
drop would incline them in either direction. If the persons 
began to think, or if their attention was called to anything, 
when the balance was in equilibrium, the head end would go 

1 Flatau's Atlas of the Human Brain, p. 25. 



26 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

down. This movement would be due to increased blood in 
the brain. It has been proved that persons can lift more 
before than after mental labour. Brain work also requires 
more nourishing food than manual labour. During a por- 
tion of the period of writing a book, an author was at a 
summer resort where the food was poor and scanty. The 
part written there was so feeble in comparison with the other 
chapters, that he rewrote it in the autumn when he had better 
food. 

The average weight of an adult male brain is about 49 
ounces; of a female brain, 44 ounces. The weight of 278 
male brains varied from 65 to 34 ounces ; of 191 female brains, 
from 5 6. to 31 ounces. There is beyond doubt a general cor- 
respondence between a large and finely organized brain, on the 
one hand, and the intelligence, on the other; just as there 
is a general correspondence between a man's health and the 
amount of work he is able to accomplish. There have been 
stupid people with large brains, just as there have been sickly 
persons who have accomplished much. This fact does not 
lead us to conclude that a man's health has nothing to do with 
his success. Yet we must remember that fineness of structure, 
intricacy of convolution, and the development of the associa- 
tive fibres have more to do with intelligence than mere brain 
weight. 

It is interesting to notice the proportion of brain to bodily 
weight in some of the lower animals. The elephant's brain is 
shr of its bo( ty 5 the sheep's, 3-L- ; the eagle's, Tl L- ; the rat's, 
sV Contrast with these the ape's, -^ ; the human infant's, 
\ ; children three years old, -^ ; adults', ^. An ox of 2000 
pounds has a much smaller brain than a man weighing 120. In 
fact, a man's brain is absolutely larger than that of any other 
creature, excepting the elephant and the whale. An 11,200 



THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 2J 

pound whale had a brain weighing 60 ounces. The elephant's 
brain weighs from eight to ten pounds. 

Now that we have drawn a rough map of the central nervous 
system and given our ideas something tangible to adhere to, we 
shall be better prepared to understand the following chapters. 



CHAPTER II 

Fatalistic Aspects 

In discussing the training of the central nervous system, we 
are confronted at the outset by the assertions of some who say 
that we are just as powerless to improve the quality of our nerve 
cells as a tree is to change the character of its leaves or to alter 
its capillary circulation. These men will not accept the fact in 
rebuttal that persons have by the proper exercise actually im- 
proved their powers of nerve-discrimination, that a tea-taster, 
a hunter, a wool-sorter, a sailor, a musician, have actually trained 
their nerve cells to greater sensitiveness in certain directions. 

The definition of the nervous system by fatalists is some- 
thing like this : The nervous system is a machine bound to 
develop in accordance with its native potential capacities. All 
attempts of the individual to change or improve his nerves will 
prove utterly futile. He is like a watch that must run under 
conditions imposed by its own machinery. The watch must 
continue its necessitated movements until it runs down, or is 
stopped by some external cause. 

Those of us who do not believe this must yet admit that the 
nervous system is a machine, the most wonderful known to us. 
The fatalists have reaped a great advantage from the unwilling- 
ness of many freedomists to admit this. Hence it seems wise, 
before proceeding further, to show how much of a machine the 
nervous system is. After we have established this fact, it should 
still be noted that we have not even then proved the general 

28 



FATALISTIC ASPECTS 29 

proposition : No machines are capable of improvement. After 
we have learned how much of a machine the nervous system is, 
we can proceed to train it more intelligently. 

The machine characteristics appear most striking in the case 
of reflex action. Certain nerve cells have the power of reflect- 
ing a stimulus, brought by a sensory nerve, back along a motor 
nerve to produce a movement. A fly alighted on a sleeper's 
face and began to crawl over it. His hand was unconsciously 
raised to brush the fly away. The sensory stimulus from touch 
poured into a cell and flowed out along a motor nerve leading 
to the arm, which executed the movement proper in such a case. 
The fly persistently alighted three times, and was as often driven 
away by the fitting movement unconsciously made. The fourth 
time that the fly alighted, the brain action became sufficiently 
intense to awake the sleeper, who then sat up and endeav- 
oured to kill the fly. The three preceding movements were 
unconscious reflexes, made with as much regularity as if the 
sleeper had been a machine operated by pressing a button. 

The cortex of the brain is generally admitted to be the seat 
of consciousness. When stimuli cause the rest of the nervous 
system to act after the cerebral hemispheres have been re- 
moved, there is no dispute over the fact that such movements 
are due to the workings of a nervous machine and nothing more. 
The most interesting experiments on reflex action have been 
made on animals after the removal of the hemispheres of the 
cerebrum. 

If we remove the brain from a frog and suspend him over 
some acid, so that his hind toes just touch the liquid, they will 
be withdrawn even more quickly than if the animal had its 
brain intact. Place the brainless frog on all fours, and put a 
a drop of the acid on his flank. The hind foot on that side is 
raised to brush the drop away. Amputate that leg, and after 



30 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

the reflex movements in the stump have proved ineffectual, the 
other leg will endeavour to remove the acid. Immediately 
after a French criminal had been beheaded, his pectoral mus- 
cle was pinched, and his hand was raised from his side to the 
muscle. 

Removal of the brain from the lower animals almost invari- 
ably increases the reflexes until death ensues. That part of 
the nervous system that acts as deputy for the brain does its 
utmost to attend to all necessary work in such a case. While 
this attempt cannot be completely successful, it yet achieves 
some wonderful results. 

Some animals after removal of the occipital lobes, or indeed, 
of the entire cerebrum, can see how to walk and avoid objects. 
Here, the rays of light affect the basal ganglia, or collections 
of nerve cells at the base of the brain, and without the inter- 
vention of consciousness enable the animal to change its course 
in walking so as to avoid obstacles. In illustration of this, 
Dr. Foster says : " Cases are recorded of the dog being obvi- 
ously still guided in some measure by retinal impressions after 
the occipital lobes, and indeed the greater part of the brain, 
had been removed. ... It is perhaps possible for simple 
afferent impulses to determine even complex movements with- 
out the intervention of ' consciousness,' and we may be justi- 
fied in speaking of the effects of light on a brainless animal as 
being mere instances of ' mechanical ' reflex action." 1 

When the cerebrum has been removed from pigeons and 
rabbits, the same general phenomena have been observed. 
Both animals in such a condition are remarkably perfect ma- 
chines. Strange to say, these animals display more seeming 
spontaneity of movement than the brainless frog, but their 
higher intelligence is wanting. If placed in the room with a 

1 Foster's Text-book of Physiology, p. 793. 



FATALISTIC ASPECTS 3 1 

dog or a cat, they show no sign of fear, and they may even 
brush up against such an enemy. While the mere physical 
stimulation from light may so affect the nerve cells at the base 
of the brain as to cause the muscles to move with seeming 
intelligence, it must not be forgotten that the sight is merely 
physical, not psychical. In other words, while the sight of 
food, friend, or foe may cause the nerve cells to exercise 
astonishing control over the muscles, none of these objects 
are recognized. A brainless pigeon walking across the floor 
approached as close to a cat as to a pitcher. 

After emphasizing the wonderfully complex machine move- 
ments of which some brainless animals are capable, it is well 
to note the limitations to such movements. If we carefully 
remove from a frog the cerebral hemispheres, leaving the 
cerebellum, medulla, and spinal cord, we can with careful 
treatment keep the animal alive for a considerable period, 
sometimes as long as a year. A chance observer might think 
that such a frog was normal. It can eat, swim, croak, and 
jump, avoiding obstacles in its path. This frog, however, 
differs in two important respects from those possessing the 
cerebral hemispheres. In the first place, it never moves unless 
acted upon by an external stimulus. Such frogs have been 
placed on a table and a chalk mark drawn around them. 
They have afterward been found dead without having stirred 
outside the mark. When they are thrown into the water, 
they continue to swim until they find something on which 
to rest or until they are exhausted. The action of the water 
upon the skin affords the requisite stimulus to develop the 
reflex act of swimming. Food might be lying near their 
mouths, but no attempts would be made to seize it. Before 
they could swallow it, some external agency must place it in 
their mouths. 



32 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

In the second place, such frogs differ from a normal one in 
that the same movement invariably follows the same stimulus. 
In this respect they differ little from a machine ; their move- 
ments can be foretold. No one can tell which of a number 
of movements a normal frog will choose in responding to the 
same stimulus. He may jump, when touched, or croak, or 
raise his foot to brush away the cause of the stimulus, or 
merely swell up. This shows that consciousness, together with 
the brain cells with w T hich it is correlated, causes, even in the 
case of animals, movements so complex and varied that it is 
useless to try to foretell them. 

A study of the foundations of will power along modern lines 
has certainly tended to show that many actions exhibit ma- 
chine characteristics. Will deals with action, and at the 
threshold of all action lie reflex, instinctive, and impulsive 
nervous tendencies. The muscles of the eye are moved in 
an unconscious reflex way to cause the image of an object 
to be focussed on the most sensitive or yellow spot of the 
retina. When a candle is brought into a dark room, the eyes 
of an infant will naturally turn so that the image of the light 
will fall upon this yellow spot. If a bright coloured light is 
then brought in, the eyes of the infant will turn away from 
the candle and so adapt themselves as to have the image of 
the coloured light form upon the point of most distinct vision, 
no matter how much the light is moved about the room. 

When the stimuli from cold affect the nervous system of the 
wild goose in a northern latitude, they develop action, and the 
bird flies to a warmer clime. When certain internal stimuli 
make themselves felt in the case of the caterpillar, it begins 
at once to weave its shroud. Prompted by such stimuli, the 
bird starts to build its nest ; the human being, to mate, to 
search for a home, and to take up the round of domestic 



FATALISTIC ASPECTS 



33 



duties toward which his ancestors were likewise impelled. 
Blind impulses due to nervous tension have from the beginning 
of history driven men to do certain things. To-day such im- 
pulses cause a mother to shield her child, a panic-stricken 
army to flee, a young man to spend his patrimony in an 
illusory search for pleasure, a gypsy to wander from place to 
place. 

In every idea there is a mechanical motor element, which 
displays itself either in nervous tension or in action. An idea 
of any concrete thing contains the germ of motor action. This 
will appear more evident when we come to consider the effect 
upon nerve cells of forming memory images of any kind (see 
Chap. XL). If we image a ruddy peach or a cluster of purple 
grapes distinctly, there will be nervous tension developed which 
will pass into the retina and the muscles of the eye. A part of 
this tension may flow into the salivary glands, causing the 
mouth to water as one thinks of the luscious fruit. If we try 
to image distinctly a giant a mile high, standing a few rods in 
front of us, gesturing with his hand and scowling, we shall 
notice a tendency in the eyes to open more widely. The 
motor element affects the muscles controlling the lids. If the 
quoit thrower first images his action distinctly, the muscles 
will become more tense, and nearly the right energy to be 
used in throwing will thus be prepared to be liberated in them. 

The motor element developed in every image furnishes the 
real reason why it is of such prime importance that children in 
the plastic age should associate only with those persons whom 
it will do no harm to imitate. One child cannot watch an- 
other rolling marbles without the development of the motor 
element in the idea, which often sets the second child to 
rolling marbles also. When we watch an athlete or a rope- 
walker at the circus, the motor element in our idea of his 

D 



34 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

movements tends to develop in us incipient movements of 
the same kind. The fatal truth exists that the most of us must 
be imitators to a certain extent ; few can be wholly leaders ; 
but this truth is rendered less sad by the fact that we can 
also determine to a certain extent whom we shall imitate. 

The curious process of muscle reading further emphasizes 
the motor element in ideas. C hides something, and B takes 
hold of him and walks off, apparently unguided, in search of 
the object. Perhaps no one would be more surprised than C 
if he was told that he was guiding B to the object. Muscle 
readers have said that the very best subject is the one who 
neither consciously helps nor hinders them; that he should 
simply keep his mind filled with the idea of the place. When 
B begins the search, he knows that C's ideas will be mirrored 
in his muscles. If C is taken in the wrong direction, the 
motor element in his idea of the right place will cause an 
involuntary contraction of his muscles. When the course is 
changed to the right one, the muscles immediately relax. 
B, with his skilfully developed touch, notices these signs uncon- 
sciously given. If he passes by the right place, he feels a con- 
traction of the muscles, which warns him that he is going too 
far. When he comes to a row of shelves to which these mus- 
cular signs have led him, he must determine whether to reach 
for a high or a low shelf. He draws the subject's arm down 
and feels slight muscular contraction ; he then directs the arm 
upward and notices that relaxation immediately develops, and 
so proceeds to find the article on an upper shelf. In the same 
way the number on any banknote can be written down by a 
blindfolded operator who holds the subject's hand, if the oper- 
ator is allowed several tentative trials. If the first figure is a 
6, and the operator starts to make a 7, he at once detects 
his mistake by the involuntary muscular resistance. If he starts 



FATALISTIC ASPECTS 35 

with a downward stroke and then continuously moves the 
pencil to the right to make a 4, he again detects resistance. 
He now knows that the figure is either a 6 or a 1. To 
determine which, he begins a curve toward the right. If there 
is no resistance, he boldly declares 6 to be the first figure. Of 
course success in muscle reading demands cultivated tactile 
and muscular sensations, which notice movements impercepti- 
ble to the average person. The point to be observed is that 
the motor element in the idea unconsciously affects the nerv- 
ous system and consequently our actions, and there is of course 
an element of machine fatalism in this. An extreme instance 
of this has been known in the case of a person who went to 
the roof of a tall building without a thought of suicide. He 
imaged himself jumping off, and the motor element in the idea 
affected his muscles so powerfully that he jumped and lost his 
life. Many persons seem to have an idea of the possibility of 
the sudden development of such an action against their will, 
and they rightly refuse to put themselves in any such danger- 
ous position. 

Hypnotism presents phenomena fully as remarkable as the 
case of the person whose image of jumping off the roof caused 
him to jump. Implant in a subject the idea that he is drink- 
ing vinegar, and the customary facial contortion will follow. 
Tell him that the sun is shining in his eyes and blinding him, 
and the motor element in the idea causes him to raise his hand 
to shield his eyes. Make him believe that he is lame, and he 
limps ; that he is at a funeral, and down come the corners of 
his mouth ; that he is walking on a hot surface, and he will 
hurriedly draw up his feet. No matter what idea is suggested 
to him, the motor element peculiar to it tends to rush out in 
the appropriate action. 

We may concede the fact that the nervous systems of us all 



7,6 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

become by middle life largely machines, which react fatally in 
a given way when prompted by a certain stimulus. The per- 
son who in early life accustoms himself to say, " I laid down ; 
he has set down; he come home last night; he drunk it all," 
will find that his organic motor memory will fatally retain these 
mistakes. He may learn later that such expressions are incor- 
rect, but the motor cells controlling the organs of speech will 
discharge their energy as before. Not until after he has voiced 
the expression, will he realize that it is wrong. 

This habituation of nerve matter to continue responding in 
the ways in which it has been early trained has its bright as 
well as its dark side. It is the purpose of this book to impress 
the fact that if the central nervous system is early habituated 
to make the proper definite responses, they will be perpetuated 
without any conscious effort on our part, and our minds will 
then be left free to engage in attending to higher things. A 
rightly trained nervous system will be like a watch- dog that 
guards our most prized acquisitions while we are asleep or 
awake, and while our own attention is directed elsewhere to 
enable us to climb the heights of knowledge. There may be 
an element of fatality about a rightly trained nervous system, 
and we are thankful that such is the case, just as thankful as 
when we secure a servant who can be depended on to do the 
right thing when we are not watching him. 

We may now proceed to discuss another aspect of the 
question of fatality. We may be asked, as we recently were 
by an eminent man of science, " Do you contend that a man 
with a poorly organized brain could become a Shakspere ? Do 
you maintain that a Mozart could have become a Raphael at 
will? Do you deny that the original construction of Mozart's 
brain rendered it absolutely pre-determined that he should 
become famous as a musician, if at all?" 



FATALISTIC ASPECTS 37 

Probably no person of sense to-day claims that a person can 
become anything he chooses. Certainly no one who under- 
stands a very little of the theory of heredity can make such a 
claim. The fox might like to become an eagle, and the Nor- 
man draft horse might wish to outstrip the Arabian courser, 
but the parentage and natural constitution of each forbid. All 
students admit that the circle of freedom is not infinite in 
extent. We are all sadly conscious of the fact that we are 
circumscribed. No being was ever allowed to choose its own 
parents ; the fox was born such, so was the eagle, and the 
large clumsy horse j but there is nothing in that fact that ren- 
ders improvement impossible for either the fox, the eagle, or 
the horse. No human being can defy the laws of his existence 
and organization; but although the circle of his freedom is 
small, it is large enough to require several lifetimes to de- 
velop to the fullest extent all his natural capacities. Along his 
own line, he can become a better or a worse man. 

Probably Mozart was born with a remarkable auditory brain 
tract, with nerve cells of exquisite sensitiveness and complex- 
ity of interlacement. All the practice in the world would not 
make fifth-rate musicians out of some people, who are born 
without any natural capacity. The truth must also be empha- 
sized that if Mozart's parents had sternly refused to allow him 
to have the proper musical training early in life, he would 
have failed to develop his temporal lobes to the limit of their 
capacity, and later in life he would have been compelled to 
work with a far less plastic brain. Thus, if the requisite 
means for training and developing the nervous system are 
not forthcoming early in life, even the possible genius may 
never develop a fraction of his earliest possibilities. In the 
same way, a person who might have been ordinarily suc- 
cessful in the walks of life may shrivel up into a nonentity 



38 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

because his latent capacities were not developed at the proper 
time. 

It is by the light of such possibilities that one should read 
these statements of Professor Donaldson : " No amount of 
cultivation will give good growth where the nerve cells are 
few and ill-nourished, but careful culture can do much where 
there are those with strong inherent impulses towards develop- 
ment. On neurological grounds, therefore, nurture is to be 
considered of much less importance than nature, and in that 
sense the capacities that we most admire in persons worthy of 
remark are certainly inborn rather than made. 

" . . . Venn, studying the size of the head in Cambridge 
students, found it on the average greatest and growing for the 
longest time in the group of most successful men. The ac- 
complishments of this fortunate group are therefore to be 
associated with innate capacities, and have small ethical sig- 
nificance ; they may be admirable just as are the paces of 
a well-bred colt, but the colt deserves no credit for its 
gait." 1 

Professor James in one place in his excellent work, The 
Principles of Psychology, seems too much impressed with the 
fatalistic aspects of having a brain. He writes : " No amount of 
culture would seem capable of modifying a man's general re- 
tentiveness. This is a physiological quality, given once for all 
with his organization, and which he can never hope to change. 
It differs no doubt in disease and health ; and it is a fact of 
observation that it is better in fresh and vigorous hours than 
when we are fagged or ill. We may say, then, that a man's 
native tenacity will fluctuate somewhat with his hygiene, and 
that whatever is good for his tone of health will also be good 
for his memory. We may even say that whatever amount of 

1 Donaldson's The Growth of the Brain, pp. 343, 350. 



FATALISTIC ASPECTS 39 

intellectual exercise is bracing to the general tone and nutri- 
tion of the brain will also be profitable to the general reten- 
tiveness. But more than this we cannot say; and this, it is 
obvious, is less than most people believe." x 

Professor James proceeds at once to modify the fatalistic 
statements in the first two sentences quoted. Doctors say 
that a man can frequently improve his health, and, according 
to James, improvement in physiological retentiveness follows. 
He is also candid enough to give this personal testimony from 
a clergyman : " As for memory, mine has improved year by 
year, except when in ill-health, like a gymnast's muscle. Be- 
fore twenty it took three or four days to commit an hour-long 
sermon ; after twenty, two days, one day, half a day, and now 
one slow, analytic, very attentive or adhesive reading does 
it." 2 

We might suppose such a dialogue as this to take place 
between an extreme fatalist and a Tom Thumb : 

" Mr. Fatalist, I should like to improve the muscles in my 
arms and trunk. They are weak and flabby. What exercise 
would you suggest? " 

" Ah, Mr. Thumb, I perceive by your question that you have 
no conception of your unchangeable physiological muscular 
qualities, given you at birth. On hearing you ask such a 
question, one would naturally suppose that you thought that 
you could become a champion athlete like the late John L. 
Sullivan." 

" Sir, you misunderstand me. I did not think to develop 
into a giant or a Hercules. I — " 

"Training will do you no good, for your muscular system 
was given you at birth, and you can never change its potential 
capacities. No matter how wretched you make yourself with 

1 James' Principles of Psychology, Vol. I., pp. 663, 664. 2 Ibid., p. 668 



40 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

exercise, you will always be a Tom Thumb, whom any ordinary 
man could toss over a six-rail fence." 

" Mr. Fatalist, I do not expect to become anybody else. 
I know I shall remain Tom Thumb, but it does not seem to 
me as if I were now more than half of what Tom Thumb is 
capable of being." 

" You are all that your potential capacities will allow you to 
be. You were born a midget, and you are in nowise to blame 
for your lack of strength." 

" But I can lift barely twenty pounds now without strain. 
Do you not think that if I exercised my muscles regularly, I 
could finally lift forty pounds? " 

" Forty pounds ! What do they amount to ? I can lift two 
hundred without training." 

" I think you can, but if I improve my muscles by exercise 
so that I can lift forty pounds, I am improving Tom Thumb 
just one hundred per cent." 

"You fail entirely to catch the drift of my argument. It 
seems to me as if even a Tom Thumb ought not to be so 
stupid. Can you not see that I am merely insisting on the 
universality of cause and effect, and denying the freedom or 
power of any human will to change by its own effort anything 
a hair's breadth?" 

" So the argument has reduced itself to the question of the 
freedom of the will ! By the way, why did you use the word 
' ought ' when you said ' It seems as if even a Tom Thumb 
ought not to be so stupid ? ' But stop, that is not a fair ques- 
tion, for no one can be compelled to incriminate himself. I 
can only say that if I were to be thoroughly convinced that my 
will was no more free than a stone, instead of being able to 
lift twenty pounds, I could then lift only ten." 

We may quote Dr. Ziehen to show the opinion of some 



FATALISTIC ASPECTS 4 1 

physiological psychologists : " The processes of thinking are 
strictly necessitated. The condition of the cerebral cortex in 
any one moment necessarily follows from its condition in the 
preceding moment. . . . We cannot think as we will, but we 
must think as just those associations which happen to be pres- 
ent, prescribe. . . . This conception (of moral responsibility) 
is contradictory to the deductions of physiological psychology. 
The latter teaches that our actions are strictly necessitated; 
they are the necessary product of our sensations and ideas. 
Therefore, according to physiological psychology, we could no 
more hold a man guilty and accountable for his bad action 
than a flower for its ugliness." 1 

It is no more the business of this work to prove the freedom 
of the will than it is of every teacher of hygiene or temperance, 
or of any one who thinks that any power may be cultivated. 
If any one wishes to deny the testimony of consciousness in 
regard to freedom at one moment and at another to rely on 
the testimony of conscious reason to prove necessitarianism ; 
if any one insists that we may as well abandon study unless we 
are guided by the rule that everything has a valid purpose, and 
then declines to give a satisfactory reason for our feeling re- 
morse except on the supposition that we were free to act differ- 
ently, — he may rest assured that it will be a long time before 
human beings eliminate from their vocabulary such words as 
obligation, morality, crime, foolishness, remorse, or effort. 

There is, however, very serious harm done by those who talk 
extreme fatalism. The mere belief that we can do a thing 
becomes an extra cog in the motor power applied to move our 
wheel of progress. There is nothing more palsying than doubt 
and unbelief. They fall like a frost upon budding human effort. 
Since the times of which Virgil sang, many a man has been able 

1 Ziehen's Introduction to Physiological Psychology, pp. 188, 216, 270. 



42 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

to do a certain thing because he thought he was able. The 
Elizabethans believed that the growth of learning and the 
wonders of the New World would open the gate to Eden. 
Hopefully these sixteenth century enthusiasts laboured to find 
it, and as a result of the spirit of that age we have Shakspere. 

Guyau thus forcibly presents these aspects of the case : 
" When we say to a (hypnotized) subject, ' you cannot move 
your arm,' we paralyze the motor current that sets the arm in 
motion. Hence I think we can establish the following law : 
Every manifestation of muscular or sensorial activity does not 
take effect unless accompanied by a certain belief in one's 
self, or by the expectation of a determinate result, on the 
occurrence of certain antecedent conditions. The conscious- 
ness of action is thus partly reduced to the belief that one is 
acting, and if this belief is destroyed, the consciousness itself 
becomes disorganized. All conscious life is based on a certain 
self-confidence. . . . Suggestion is the introduction within us 
of a, practical belief which is spontaneously realized ; the moral 
art of suggestion may, therefore, be defined as the art of modi- 
fying an individual by persuading him that he is, or may be, 
other than he is. This art is one of the most important appli- 
ances in education. All education, indeed, should be directed 
to this end, to convince the child that he is capable of good 
and incapable of evil, in order to render him actually so ; to 
persuade him that he has a strong will, in order to give him 
strength of will ; to make him believe that he is morally free 
and master of himself, in order that the idea of moral liberty 
may tend to progressively realize itself." 1 

We certainly have sound reasons for believing that we can 
by the proper training make our nervous systems more helpful 
machines. It is probably a fact that the number of cells in the 
1 Guyau's Education and Heredity \ pp. 22-24. 



FATALISTIC ASPECTS 43 

brain is determined at birth, and that no training will increase 
this number. We, however, fail to see why it is necessary to 
increase them. We might as well argue that it is hopeless for 
any one desirous of becoming a runner to exercise the mus- 
cles in his legs because the number of his legs is absolutely 
determined at birth, and is subject to no increase. There are 
between one and two thousand million cells in the brain, and 
there was probably never a person who did not * have several 
million undeveloped ones. 

Two gardeners may till precisely the same patch of ground, 
— the one after the other. The second gardener may, without 
increasing the extent of the patch one foot, double the amount 
of the yield. The ground may be fit for producing nothing 
but cabbages, and yet he may raise cabbage heads twice as 
large as those grown by the first tiller. Two pups may be 
taken from the same litter, and the central nervous system 
of the one be trained to respond promptly to the word of 
command. This training will form actual grooves in the brain, 
and the nerve cells will discharge their energy definitely and 
reliably — in other words, habitually — when the proper stimulus 
is felt. Such a dog cannot be dispensed with in hunting, and 
he is valuable in guarding property; whereas his untrained 
brother cannot be depended on in any capacity. The same 
thing is true of children. They may be trained so as to 
respond in the right way to any duty in life. If they see a 
misplaced article, they may, on catching sight of it, put it in its 
place as naturally as a dog points toward the bird for which 
the hunter is looking. If they resolve to do a thing, the motor 
centres in their brain, trained by fitting early exercise, will be 
better adapted for initiating the proper movements. 

It is an old saying that one cannot make a silk purse out 
of a sow's ear. Another proverb supplementary to this ought 



44 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

to become current, — that both the quality of the sow and of 
her ear may be improved. In the last century a persistent 
English farmer so improved his breed of sheep that each 
yielded twice as many pounds of better mutton than before. 
The late Piofessor Maurice was asked why he taught certain 
classes special subjects with such painstaking effort, when the 
majority would become nothing but hewers of wood and draw- 
ers of water. He replied that he feared, if he did not do his 
utmost in the way of instruction, that the wood would be badly 
hewed, and the water spilled in the drawing. 

After a number of years' experiment with the growing ner- 
vous system of youth, the writer has demonstrated to his own 
satisfaction that young nerve cells are more amenable to train- 
ing than any other matter of which he has knowledge. He is 
pleased to quote some recognized authorities on this point. 
Professor Donaldson says : " It has been made probable that 
by the cultivating processes of school training the formed 
structures tend to be strengthened, dormant elements roused 
to further growth and organization, and made more perfect in 
this or that direction according to the nature of the exercise. 
By strengthening the formed cells their powers of differential 
reaction, of organic memory, and resistance to fatigue are in- 
creased. By associating given sets of muscular reactions with 
given sense impressions, habits are formed. . . . 

" It mast be remembered that, as a rule, our latent capaci- 
ties as individuals are far beyond our regular achievements, 
and that the stimuli which shall bring these powers into action 
may be of very different sorts." 1 

The united testimony of two eminent physicians may also 
strengthen the reader in his belief that the wonderfully plastic 
nervous system is subject to improvement. They thus con- 

1 The Growth of the Brain, pp. 344, 360. 



FATALISTIC ASPECTS 45 

elude one of their works : " The degree of excitability of the 
nerve centres varies considerably among individuals, and it also 
may be influenced by exercise. On this depends the aptitude 
for reflex acts of all kinds. Lastly, there may be a greater or 
less influence exerted by the higher over the lower centres; 
or, in other words, a greater or less degree of inhibitory power. 
The power of the will, which may also be strengthened by exer- 
cise, or weakened by yielding to disease, or by tame compli- 
ance, depends on this factor. Thus by a study of nervous 
actions, as connected with and stimulated by impressions on 
the organs of sense, we have constructed a physiological basis 
of character, and that without admitting the truth of an exclu- 
sively materialistic hypothesis. Behind all brain action, although 
closely connected with it, there is the strongest probability of 
the existence of an immaterial agent of which Spenser wrote 
in his Hymn in Honour of Beauty: 

" ' For of the soul the body form doth take, 
For soul is form, and doth the body make. ' " 1 

1 M' Kendrick and Snodgrass, Physiology of the Senses, p. 297. 



CHAPTER III 
The Possible Modifications of the Brain 

It is rightly inferred that training can make some change in 
the brain. The question is therefore pertinent : How can the 
brain be modified ? To this a definite reply ought to be forth- 
coming. 

Exercise can modify the brain in at least three different 
ways : I. The sensory brain tracts may be modified by incom- 
ing currents from the different senses. II. The motor areas 
undergo change from initiating new muscular movements and 
from often repeating old ones. III. The modification of the 
associative functions of the brain is of special importance. 

When the sensory portions of the brains of the deaf and 
dumb have been carefully examined, they have shown a lack of 
development in the cortical areas of the lost senses. Professor 
Donaldson made a careful study of the brain of Laura Bridg- 
man 1 after death, and discovered some facts from which im- 
portant deductions can be drawn for the training of the central 
nervous system. Laura Bridgman was born in 1829 and died 
in 1889. She had the use of all her senses until she was nearly 
three years old, when she had a severe attack of scarlet fever, 
which made her completely deaf and deprived her of sight in 
her left eye. She could see a trifle with her right eye until she 
reached her eighth year, when she became stone blind. 

1 See American Journal 0/ Psychology, Vol. III., No. 3; Vol. IV., Nos. 2 
and 4. 

46 



THE POSSIBLE MODIFICATIONS OF THE BRAIN 47 

Professor Donaldson examined fourteen localities in each 
hemisphere, and found that the cortex of her brain was thinner 
than the average. He says : " In this connection it is interest- 
ing to notice that those parts of the cortex which, according 
to the current view, were to be associated with the defective 
sense organs, were also particularly thin. The cause of this 
thinness was found to be due, at least in part, to the small size 
of the nerve cells there present. Not only were the large and 
medium-sized nerve cells smaller, but the impression made on 
the observer was that they were also less numerous than in the 
normal cortex." He also found that the cortex of the right 
occipital region was much thinner than the left. This region 
was the principal cortical centre for the left eye, in which sight 
was the earlier lost. It is a reasonable inference that the left 
occipital lobe was the better developed because sensory stimuli 
from the right eye poured into it the longer. These helped to 
modify and develop the brain cells there. 

When we speak of undeveloped potentialities, it is well to 
remember Professor Donaldson's conclusions that "at birth, 
and for a long time after, many systems contain cell elements 
which are more or less immature, not forming a functional part 
of the tissue, and yet under some conditions capable of further 
development. . . . 

" For the cells continually appearing in the developing cortex 
no other source is known than the nuclei or granules found 
there in its earliest stages. These elements are metamorphosed 
neuroblasts which have shrunken to a volume less than that 
which they had at first, and which remain small until, in the 
subsequent process of enlargement necessary for their full 
development, they expand into well-marked cells. Elements 
intermediate between these granules and the fully developed 
cells are always found, even in mature brains, and therefore it 



48 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

is inferred that the latter are derived from the former. The 
appearances there lead also to the conclusions that many ele- 
ments stop short of complete development, and that the num- 
ber which might develop in any given case is far beyond the 
number that actually does so, and that the characteristic ap- 
pearance of the cortex in the various localities depends on the 
expansion of dissimilar layers of the primitive granules." 1 

It is probable that if we had microscopes of sufficient mag- 
nifying power, and if we could also expose without injury the 
brains of growing children for frequent inspection, we should 
see the cells of the various sensory areas in course of modifica- 
tion. We should probably also see these cells developed and 
refined in proportion as the child was taught to exercise his 
senses sufficiently and judiciously upon the right material. We 
might further expect to see the modifications due to develop- 
ment retarded so long as the child could not have interesting 
objects to appeal to all his senses. Could we have watched 
the temporal lobes of Beethoven and Mozart, we should prob- 
ably have seen cellular development there as musical sounds 
poured into their ears and affected those lobes. 

When barbaric man received any news at second hand, that 
is, not through the media of his own senses, the information 
almost invariably reached him through the ear, and the modifi- 
cation which the temporal lobes thereby received is still shown 
in some striking ways. 

A teacher thus records his actual experience with the ear 
and eye interpretation of a class of boys of the average age of 
fourteen, engaged in reading Shakspere's As You Like It. We 
give the account, together with an illustrative passage in full, 
because experience is preferable to any amount of theorizing. 
This account ought to enable us to understand better the 
1 Donaldson's The Growth of the Brain, pp. 74, 238. 



THE POSSIBLE MODIFICATIONS OF THE BRAIN 49 

necessity of taking advantage of existing brain modification in 
teaching pupils to grasp certain subjects more fully. 

" I had a class of about thirty boys, of the average age of 
fourteen, reading Shakspere's As You Like It. For a while I 
read the advance lesson to them the day before, sometimes not 
explaining a single passage. They showed such intelligent 




& 



Fig. II. — Diagram of left hemisphere of human brain, showing the differ- 
ence in brain tracts engaged in receiving news at second hand. The auditory . 
centre in the temporal lobes below the fissure of Sylvius is the part of the brain 
cortex first affected by oral narration. The sight centre in the occipital lobes 
at the base of the brain is the part of the cortex first affected in reading about 
anything. 

appreciation of the story that I concluded it was not necessary 
for me to waste any more time in reading the advance lesson, 
and so devoted my time to having them give me the story of 
the lesson for that day, and what they thought of the char- 
acters and the situations. I noticed that the recitations at once 
became poorer, and the interest seemed to decline. After a 



50 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

few days I scolded the class sharply, but as the next lesson 
was no better, I again reprimanded them. Some of the boys 
asked me to read the lesson, saying that they understood it 
better when I did. 

" Thinking that this was a ruse to kill time and keep from 
answering questions, I replied that the English in the passage 
which they seemed not to understand was nearly as easy as a 
third reader lesson, and that they could read such easy English 
just as well as I, if they were not too lazy. I was surprised 
to hear the brightest boy in the class — and he was, indeed, 
remarkably bright — say, ' When we look at the printed words, 
they don't seem to mean as much as when we hear you read 
them. Things seem to branch out more then, and I can 
somehow seem to hear the characters talk afterwards.' 'Yes, 
sir ; yes, sir,' echoed a number of other boys, ' that's so.' 

" ' You have failed to comprehend this passage, one of the 
finest in the play,' I said, feeling that I was the victim of a 
conspiracy. ' Close your books, and I will now read this pas- 
sage to you without a word of explanation. I shall hold you 
responsible for telling me what there is difficult about it.' 

" I then read slowly : 

Oliver. Orlando doth commend him to you both, 
And to that youth he calls his Rosalind 
He sends this bloody napkin. Are you he? 

Rosalind. I am ! What must we understand by this ? 

Oliver. Some of my shame ; if you will know of me 
What man I am, and how, and why, and where 
This handkercher was stain'd. 

Celia. I pray you, tell it. 

Oliver. When last the young Orlando parted from you 
He left a promise to return again 
Within an hour, and pacing through the forest, 
Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy, 



THE POSSIBLE MODIFICATIONS OF THE BRAIN 51 

Lo, what befel! he threw his eye aside, 

And mark what object did present itself: 

Under an oak, whose boughs were moss'd with age 

And high top bald with dry antiquity, 

A wretched, ragged man, o'ergrown with hair, 

Lay sleeping on his back! about his neck 

A green and gilded snake had wreathed itself, 

Who with her head nimble in threats approached 

The opening of his mouth ; but suddenly, 

Seeing Orlando, it unlink'd itself, 

And with indented glides did slip away 

Into a bush : under which bush's shade 

A lioness, with udders all drawn dry, 

Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch, 

When that the sleeping man should stir ; for 'tis 

The royal disposition of that beast 

To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead 

This seen, Orlando did approach the man 

And found it was his brother, his elder brother. 

Celia. O, I have heard him speak of that same brother ; 
And he did render him the most unnatural 
That lived amongst men. 

Oliver. And well he might do so 
For well I know he was unnatural. 

Rosalind. But, to Orlando : did he leave him there, 
Food to the suck'd and hungry lioness ? 

Oliver. Twice did he turn his back and purposed so ; 
But kindness, nobler ever than revenge, 
And nature stronger than his just occasion, 
Made him give battle to the lioness, 
Who quickly fell before him : in which hurtling 
From miserable slumber I awaked. 

Celia. Are you his brother? 

Rosalind. Was't you he rescued ? 

Celia. Was't you that did so oft contrive to kill him ? 

Oliver. 'Twas I ; but 'tis not \. 



52 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

" ' Now tell me what there is difficult about that/ I said, after 
finishing the passage. 

u ' Nothing,' echoed a dozen voices. 

" I noticed that some of the speakers were those who had 
failed to understand the scene or to give me a clear idea of 
Orlando's nobility or to point out the exact signs of returning 
manhood in Oliver. 'You may rise and give me the story 
contained in this passage, and then tell me what it suggests to 
you,' I said to one of the boys, who had a few minutes before 
failed to answer the same question. 

" He now rose and gave in his own words an account of the 
passage, and then described the moral lesson which it taught. 
He did so well that I said promptly, ' Why did you not read 
this yourself before coming into the class ? ' 

" ' I did, sir, but it seemed hazy to me. It didn't seem to 
branch out as it did when you read it.' " 

After this the teacher read the advance lesson to the class, 
and obtained far better results. For untold barbaric ages, 
man had obtained, through the medium of the ear, almost all 
the knowledge that came to him second hand. The news- 
paper and the book did not exist for him to interpret their 
meaning by the eye. 

It is easy enough to say that some boys are naturally of the 
auditory type, others of the visual, but this does not explain 
away such cases as the preceding ; for, in a certain sense, the 
majority of the class were visualists ; that is, they could recall 
sights better than sounds. But more accurate investigation of 
the facts showed that even the visualists could construct a more 
vivid visual picture if the elements were given them through 
the ear rather than through the eye. By glancing back at the 
passage quoted from As You Like It, we shall notice that 
the greater part of that special passage requires visual, not au- 



THE POSSIBLE MODIFICATIONS OF THE BRAIN 53 

ditory, interpretation. The oak, ragged man, green and gilded 
snake, and lioness appeal more powerfully to the eye than to 
the ear ; but they excite the visual tract most strongly when 
it is awakened through associations that come by way of the 
ear. 

Those schoolboys, therefore, visualists as well as others, re- 
tained that auditory brain modification from primeval times, 
and so were able to interpret past events better by hearing 
them told than by seeing them described on the printed page. 
The writer never thinks of the experience of that class in As 
You Like It, without remembering the case of a dog who was 
watching for the return of his master. When the master 
appeared within the range of distinct vision, the dog looked 
dreamily in that direction, but failed to recognize him. A few 
seconds later a puff of wind came from the direction of the 
master toward the dog, and the animal immediately sprang off 
to meet him. The dog had seen the master, but the affection 
of the retina and the occipital lobes meant nothing to the ani- 
mal. " The sight of the master did not branch out," as the 
schoolboy said. The dog's olfactory tract had been his chief 
interpretative agent for ages, hence the moment the wind 
brought a whiff of the master's odour, he was recognized. 

We must remember, then, that the brain is subject to modi- 
fications from each of the senses. After receiving a new sen- 
sation, the brain of the infant is a changed organ, and it will 
thereafter react in a changed manner upon the world's stimuli. 

Next, we pass on to motor modification. We have seen 
(Fig. 6, p. 14) that the motor area for the brain lies on both 
sides of the fissure of Rolando, and that every muscle in the 
body is under the more or less direct control of motor cells 
somewhere in the central nervous system. The infant modifies 
his motor cells by each new movement, or combination of 



54 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

movements, that he makes. He also renders this modifica- 
tion more definite and permanent by repeating those same 
movements. 

The process of modifying the cells at the top of the fissure 
of Rolando, which initiate and control movements in the leg, 
begins soon after birth. When the infant flexes or extends 
his legs, wriggles his toes, or kicks, his motor cells have begun 
that process of modification which will finally enable them to 
control the legs in the wonderful art of walking and keeping 
the body in equilibrium on two feet. The player on the piano 
or the violin spends years in modifying the motor cells con- 
trolling the arm and hand in order to secure movements ex- 
actly fitted to the requirements of the case. In learning how 
to write, almost every one has hard work so to modify the 
motor cells that they shall guide the pen only where he wishes 
it to go. Most of us have memories of our pens going into 
outlandish places while we were trying to make a letter like 
the copy. Every man of action in any field is engaged in 
modifying his motor cells. 

Whether we are speaking of motor or sensory cells, we may 
agree with Delboeuf, who says : " Every impression leaves a 
certain ineffaceable trace ; that is to say, the molecules, once 
they are arranged otherwise and forced to vibrate in a different 
way, will not return exactly to their original state. If I brush 
the surface of still water with a feather, the liquid will not 
resume the form which it had before : it may again present a 
smooth surface, but molecules will have changed places, and 
a sufficiently penetrating eye would certainly discover therein 
evidence of the passage of the feather. Animal molecules that 
have been disarranged have thereby gained, in a greater or less 
degree, the capacity for undergoing disarrangement. Doubt- 
less, if this same external agency does not again act anew upon 



THE POSSIBLE MODIFICATIONS OF THE BRAIN 55 

the same molecules, they will tend to resume their own natural 
movement; but the case will be very different if they are 
again and again subjected to the same action. Then they will 
little by little lose the power of returning to their natural move- 
ment and will become more and more identified with that 
which is impressed upon them, till at last it becomes*jiatural to 
them in its turn, and they obey the slightest cause that will set 
them in vibration.* ' 1 

If we could examine the developing motor region with a 
microscope of sufficient magnifying power, it is conceivable 
that we might learn wherein the modification due to exercise 
consists. We might also, under such conditions, be able to say, 
" This is the motor region of a piano player. The modifica- 
tions here correspond precisely to those necessary for control- 
ling such movements of the hand"; or, "This is the motor 
tract of a blacksmith ; this, of an engraver ; and these must be 
cells which govern the vocal organs of an orator." 

While we shall probably have neither the microscope, nor 
the opportunity to use it in any such way as this, we are never- 
theless sure that modification of the motor area changes the 
correlated muscular reaction. Pathology has rendered that 
conclusion certain. Cases of brain tumours, epilepsy, and 
paralysis have demonstrated the fact beyond question. 

The cortex of the brain is modified in a marked manner by 
the development of fibres of association (see Fig. 10, p. 24). 
Vulpius made a very careful study of the tangential fibres, 
which run parallel to the surface of the cortex and connect 
various convolutions with each other. These fibres are, of 
course, as important to the brain as good wagon roads, canals, 
and railroads are in the development of a country. Vulpius 
found that between the ages of sixteen months and thirty-three 

1 Delboeuf, quoted by Ribot, Diseases of Memory, Chap. I. 



56 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

years the number of these fibres had increased. The following 
charts will show the rate and duration of this increase. 

In the third left frontal convolution (see p. n), which is the 
motor area for speech in case of right-handed people, Vulpius 
found that the fibres increased steadily in number until the 
age of thirty-three. This number remained approximately the 
same until fifty, when a decrease began. 

The ascending frontal convolution (see p. n), which is a 
varied motor centre, likewise showed an increase up to the age 
of thirty-three. After that time the fibres began a very rapid 
decrease. This decrease might have been expected from the 
waning powers of athletes after that period. 

The first temporal convolution (see p. n) also increased its 
fibres up to the age of thirty-three. This convolution forms 
part of the sensory centre for hearing. The number of the 
fibres here remain at their maximum from thirty-three until 
fifty-three, and then begin to decrease. 

The existence of these associative fibres is absolutely essential 
for memory, association, and motor discharge. We have al- 
ready seen that the various sensory nerves pour their currents 
into different parts of the brain cortex. Unless these were as- 
sociated, we could not fuse into one idea for future recall the 
various sense aspects of the same thing. Thus, an orange seen 
would not be the same to conscious memory as an orange 
tasted. A rose smelled would never be the same as a rose 
touched. Again, the sight of a rose could never be an incen- 
tive for us to pluck it, unless there were fibres connecting the 
area for sight with the motor centre for the arm. We might 
see a runaway horse dashing toward us, but the sight stimulus 
would not impel us to get out of the way, unless fibres ran from 
the occipital lobes to the motor centre for the legs. 

A scholarly gentleman, who was an excellent logical talker, 



THE POSSIBLE MODIFICATIONS OF THE BRAIN 



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Fig. 12. — Charts C, D, E, to show the increase and decrease in medullated 
associative brain fibres from the outer, inner, and interior layers of the cortex. 

The dashes indicate the outer layer; the unbroken line, the 

middle layer ; the line broken by dots, the inner layer. The figures on the top 



58 



EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



represent the age of the person examined ; those on the left side against the 
vertical, the average number of fibres in 0.036 square mm. of surface. Chart 
C is for the third left frontal convolution ; D, for the right ascending frontal 
convolution ; E, for the left first temporal convolution. — DONALDSON, from 
VULPIUS. 

complained that, when he sat down to write, his ideas fled ; 
if he began to talk on the same subject, their sequence was 
easy and rapid. For years he had trained his ideas to seek an 




Fig. 13. — Diagram to illustrate some of the association paths in the brain. 

outlet through the motor centre for speech, and not through 
the motor cells which directed the movements of the pen in 
writing the thoughts. A diagram illustrating this difference of 
outlet will enable us to see more clearly the necessity for brain 
modification by different associated paths. 

Let us suppose that A is an idea correlated with a portion of 
the frontal lobe of the brain. In the case of the gentleman 
already mentioned, the habitual outlet for the expression of the 
idea had been along the path b leading to the motor centre for 



THE POSSIBLE MODIFICATIONS OF THE BRAIN 59 

speech. When he wished to write, the outlet was along the 
strange path c to the motor centre for the arm. Just as some 
roads in a forest become impassable or ill-defined for want of 
travel and attention, so the gentleman found the path c well- 
nigh impassable for his idea. Because of natural inaptitude or 
lack of early training, or both combined, Washington Irving 
could scarcely make a presentable speech one minute in length 
on any public occasion. In his case the path c toward ex- 
pressing his ideas by writing was easy, but b was a way very 
hard to travel. 

When a soldier marching hears the command " Halt ! " the 
tension developed thereby in the auditory centre passes along 
the path e to the motor centre for the legs, and he inhibits 
their movements. If he hears the command " Carry arms ! " 
the tension passes from the auditory centre along the path d to 
the motor centre for the arm. 

If the engineer of a locomotive plunging ahead in the dark- 
ness were to see a red light, the tension in the sight centre 
from such a stimulus would pass immediately by the path g to 
the arm centre, and the throttle-valve and air brake would be 
pulled. If we saw some one about to step on our toe, the 
stimulus due to this would pass rapidly by the path/ to the leg 
centre, and an effort would be made to withdraw the foot in 
time. 

We can now understand why an increase in the number of 
brain cells is not so important for the manifestations of genius 
as is the establishing of connections between different cells. 
Genius enables a man to see an old fact in a new light or a 
new fact in an old light. Common eyes had, since the earliest 
times, seen the steam escaping from a boiling vessel. Finally, 
the eyes of a genius associated that vapour with the strength of 
a horse, and the manner of life of the entire world has in con- 



60 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

sequence been changed. A genius concluded that the moon 
must be held in her orbit by some natural law, and he straight- 
way proceeded to associate this new induction with the old 
phenomenon of the fall of an apple or the fact that a basket 
containing apples could be revolved at such a rate of speed 
that the apples would not fall out when the basket was inverted. 
Whenever new brain cells are associated, there comes into ex- 
istence a physical basis for a new idea in the world of thought. 
There has been no increase in the number of letters in our 
alphabet for a very long time, and yet the possible combina- 
tions are such that the increase in words since even Dr. Samuel 
Johnson's day is something enormous. We can now readily 
understand why the brain of a genius and of an ordinary per- 
son may be of nearly the same weight. The proportion of 
isolated and comparatively worthless cells would be far greater 
in the case of the ordinary man. 

A study of the central nervous systems of children and adults 
has shown that the brain and spinal cord are modified in re- 
spect to both weight and size with advancing years. The 
weight of the brain is one-half greater at maturity than at birth, 
while the spinal cord is seven and one-half times heavier. 

To recapitulate, we may say that each sensory brain tract is 
modified by exercise. Every time the song of a bird is heard, 
a flower is seen, a rose is smelled, a door-knob is touched, a 
fruit is tasted, or a pound weight is lifted, the corresponding 
sensory brain tract is thereby modified. Whenever the fingers 
are flexed, an arm extended, the muscles of a leg moved, the 
body bent, the expression of the face changed, or a word spoken, 
there is a corresponding motor modification in the brain. From 
birth until the age of thirty-three there is an increase in the 
cerebral association fibres. During this period the central 
nervous system is also modified in respect to size and weight. 



CHAPTER IV 

Attention, Nutrition, and Fatigue in their Rela- 
tions to the Central Nervous System 

On the physical side, we may define attention as tension 
in nerve cells. There is an analogy between cells which are 
at any time furnishing the physical basis of attention, and the 
tense strings of an ^Eolian harp, which are vibrating in the 
wind with sufficient intensity to produce a sound. 

It is usual to distinguish between reflex and voluntary at- 
tention. Reflex attention is given, without our seeking or 
volition, to certain incoming nerve stimuli of great intensity 
or peculiar quality. The discharge of a cannon, the slamming 
of a door, the tumbling of a clock off the mantelpiece, a flash 
of lightning, the odour of onions or of boiling codfish, the un- 
suspected pepper in the First of April candy, or a rude slap 
on the back, will sufficiently stimulate the auditory, visual, 
olfactory, gustatory, or tactile centre in the brain to cause 
attention even against our will. In reflex attention there is 
lack of previous voluntary innervation in the appropriate cen- 
tre. The stimulus comes when we are not looking for it. 

In voluntary attention, on the other hand, we are conscious 
of an effort to make the utmost out of the object, whether 
subjective or objective. When we are listening for an ap- 
proaching footstep, it is probable that the voluntary attention 
centred in that direction serves to make more sensitive to 
sound certain brain cells in the auditory centre. It is cer- 
tain that we can hear sounds inaudible to another, if we are 

61 



62 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

already on the attentive watch for them. We can explain 
this on no other ground than that voluntary attention is cor- 
related with heightened activity in the proper cortical brain 
area, and that this activity is developed in advance of an 
incoming sensory stimulus. Common experience teaches us 
that we may hear a faint tap on our door, if we are expecting 
a caller, but if we are busy with some interesting work, loud 
knocks may be necessary to call forth reflex attention. 

A knowledge of the fact that attention of any kind is cor- 
related with expenditure of energy in nerve cells is of the 
utmost importance in any branch of education. The major- 
ity of parents and teachers have been singularly neglectful 
of the physical accompaniments of attention. Their impor- 
tance will be manifest when one realizes that without these 
there can be no attention of any kind. Even reflex atten- 
tion will exhaust nerve energy in certain brain tracts if the 
stimulus is continuous. Boiler-makers are sometimes thank- 
ful for this, although not for the increasing difficulty of hear- 
ing, which is the usual accompaniment of such continued 
over-stimulation of the auditory centre. 

Voluntary attention makes severer drafts upon the brain 
than reflex attention. Tense voluntary attention will weary 
the strongest brain, which will soon demand rest or a change 
in the direction of attention. Let any one extend his arm as 
tensely as possible and hold it at right angles to his body. 
This muscular tension will soon cause weariness. In an anal- 
ogous way, tension in brain cells soon exhausts their energy 
for a while. Just as a change of position will enable the arm 
to do additional work, so a change of subject, involving a 
different direction to the attention, will admit of additional 
voluntary mental effort. Indeed, this often seems more rest- 
ful than mere vacuity of attention. 



ATTENTION, NUTRITION, AND FATIGUE 6$ 

Not only mental effort, but work of any kind, tends to use 
up the stored energy in nerve cells and to bring on fatigue. 
Hodge stimulated by electricity the nerves leading to the 
spinal ganglion cells of a cat. The stimulus was continued 
for fifteen seconds and then intermitted for forty-five seconds. 
During the hour there was a total of twenty minutes stimula- 
tion and forty minutes rest. At the end of one hour, the 
nuclei of the stimulated cells had shrunk twenty-two per 
cent. After a period of sufficient rest, which would vary 
with the age of the animal, the nuclei regained their normal 
size. In some cases, after a severe stimulation for five hours, 
Hodge found the volume of the nucleus diminished fifty per 
cent. He killed certain animals in the evening after a day 
of activity, and compared the size of the cells with those of 
animals of the same species killed in the morning after a 
night of repose. The cells of the latter animals were found 
to be the larger. Fresh proof was thus obtained that the ♦ 
nervous system demands recuperative rest after activity. 1 

Muscular activity and the ensuing fatigue are correlated 
much more closely with fatigue in the central nerve cells 
than is popularly thought. Professor Donaldson says: "In 
the last stages of extreme fatigue, it is the nerve cells, not 
the muscles, which are exhausted. . . . 

" In general, the fatigue which controls us is in so large 
a measure dependent on the nervous system that there is 
reason to make the\ changes occurring there the most promi- 
nent, though it can also be shown that the glands and mus- 
cles undergo changes as the result of activity." 2 

Seeing, then, that muscular energy is so closely associated 
with the condition of the nerve cells, all influences affecting 

1 Hodge, Journal of Morphology, 1894. 

2 The Growth of the Brain, pp. 312, 322. 



6 4 



EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



them are of extreme importance whether for mental or physical 
work. Lombard ascertained by experiment that the energy 
in the muscles, and consequently also in the central cells, 




Fig. 14. — " Showing at each hour of the day and night how many centi- 
meters a weight of 3,000 grammes could be raised by repeated voluntary con- 
tractions of the forefinger before fatigue set in. The curve is highest at 10 to 
11 A.M., and 10 to 11 P.M. Lowest, 3 to 4 P.M., and 3 to 4 A.M. Circle with 
dot, observation made just after taking food; square with dot, smoking; 
* work done eight minutes after drinking fifteen cubic centimeters of whiskey." 
— Donaldson, from Lombard. 

undergoes rhythmic variations in the course of each twenty- 
four hours. Hence, at certain times of the day both nervous 
and muscular energy are naturally at their maximum. Those 
who wish to obtain the cream of brain energy for certain pro- 



ATTENTION, NUTRITION, AND FATIGUE 65 

ductions will do well to profit by this fact in actual life. The 
foregoing chart shows the fluctuations in voluntary muscular 
energy for each of the twenty- four hours. 

It must be remembered that this chart is also in a measure 
indicative of the energy in the cells of the motor brain tract 
at different times of the day. When one lifts a weight, he 
starts by innervating the motor cells which flex the muscles 
concerned in the work. If the energy in these cells was below 
the average, the muscular response would also be below the 
average. 

The truth that certain times of the day find the brain in a 
more energetic condition is often made evident in practical life. 
A professor gave the same extempore lecture on two different 
days ; the first time at 1 1 a.m. He then showed easy mastery 
of his subject, and he held the attention of his audience easily 
from first to last. The second time he began speaking at 
4 p.m., and he never once seemed to be master of the subject, 
although he was evidently labouring very hard to be impressive. 
Many of the audience were yawning and shifting their posi- 
tions. In commenting afterward on his feelings that afternoon, 
he said that he had never experienced a sense of greater effort, 
that instead of the ideas flowing from him easily and naturally 
as on the morning of the previous lecture, he had to take a 
cudgel and drive them all out of the cave in which they seemed 
to be endeavouring to conceal themselves. Nevertheless, a 
part of the yawning of the audience was to be explained in 
terms of their own wearied condition. At 4 p.m. the nervous 
and muscular energy is at the lowest point reached during the 
day, hence the audience were in as poor a state to be energetic 
listeners as he to speak. Bicyclers making a tour have often 
declared that at 11 a.m. they would be riding swiftly with little 
effort, about 3 p.m. they would begin to feel much fatigued, 



66 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

while at 6 or 7 p.m. their strength would often seem to return 
like a tidal wave. We might say that, barring individual pecu- 
liarities, the chart given above represents in a rough way the 
energy for attention in cerebral cells. The strange fact that 
this is as great between 10 and n p.m. as at any time during 
the day, agrees well with the testimony of many authors. The 
writer is sure that he can think more quickly and easily at 10 p.m. 
than at 8 p.m., yet he prefers from 10 to 11 a.m. to any other 
hour. While we are not justified in asserting that the energy 
in sensory brain tracts follows the same curve as that for motor 
reactions, there is probably a close connection between the two. 

Those who believe in long hours for school or mental 
work ought to remember this statement from Ribot : "Fatigue 
in every shape is fatal to memory. The impressions received 
under such conditions are not fixed, and the reproduction of 
them is very laborious and often impossible. Now fatigue is 
regarded as a state wherein, owing to the over-activity of an 
organ, the nutrition suffers and halts. When the normal con- 
ditions are restored, memory comes back again." 1 

A study of the physical aspects of attention is necessary in 
order that we may do the most effective mental work. If we 
notice ourselves carefully, we can often detect a distinct phys- 
ical strain in attention. If we innervate our ears to catch the 
first sound of a coming footstep ; if we continuously follow 
the flight of a bird across the heavens ; if we pass our fingers 
over various fabrics to detect a difference, — we are conscious 
of a physical tension, which, if unintermitted, produces fatigue. 
The highest medical authorities agree that attention strongly di- 
rected to any part of the body will produce a physical change. 
If the attention is centred on the stomach, the digestion will 
suffer ; if on the liver, that will become deranged. The vascu- 
1 Ribot's Diseases of Memory, Chap. V. 



ATTENTION, NUTRITION, AND FATIGUE 6? 

larity of bodily organs and calibre of the blood vessels can thus 
be made to undergo a change. In short, the physical aspects 
of attention are strongly marked. 

It follows as a corollary from the physical basis of attention 
that it cannot be held at the same intensity for a long period. 
There are also two classes of objects to which the strongest 
will cannot long chain the attention. The first is an object 
which does not awaken interest, either directly or indirectly. 
Many persons have never learned that no amount of compul- 
sion can rivet the attention to such an object. 

The second class of objects which can claim but short-lived 
attention are those which present one unchanging aspect. It 
is by no means always necessary that there should be a new 
object to secure the attention again. A new phase of an old 
object is equally efficacious. Any one who can show an old 
thing in a new light, is always sure of a willing audience. Stone 
coal received little attention from men before they learned 
that it would burn. Then attention was at once directed 
toward it. So we become interested in the most common 
insects, flowers, and birds, as soon as a new attribute is dis- 
covered. The genius is he who shows us something new in an 
old thing, so that our attention is again turned toward it. 

So far as we know, all energy, whether mental or physical, 
travels in waves. Attention rises and falls like the waves of 
the sea, and cannot remain long at the same level. If one 
will take a watch and remove it to such a distance that the 
ticking is barely heard, he will notice that periods when he can 
hear the sound alternate with those when he can not. These 
periods exhibit wave-like characteristics. If a water faucet at 
a little distance is turned, the same will prove true. The rise 
and fall of attention do not correspond to the periods of the 
sound waves. We may suppose that cellular vibrations, or 



68 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

some kind of molecular brain tension, determine this character- 
istic of attention, although we have no instruments sufficiently 
fine to enable us to demonstrate this. 

The inertia inherent in all nerve cells must be overcome 
before they can act so as to rouse even reflex attention. We 
are thus protected against being overwhelmed by the myriad 
stimuli of slight intensity. Were the case otherwise, every 
variation in the density, temperature, saturation, and move- 
ment in the atmosphere would be the object of attention; so 
would the slight rustling of the leaves, the hum of insects. 
Bewilderment and speedy exhaustion would be the result of 
attention thus developed. The very stones, large and small, 
that lie on the surface of the earth, would be rolling around 
and perhaps crushing our feet, were it not for inertia, for the 
wind would blow them here and there. This dead and often 
despised quality of matter also fortunately makes itself felt in 
the region of mind, otherwise no one could think deeply on 
any problem for sixty consecutive seconds. 

Our knowledge of the physiology of the brain does not 
enable us to explain the undoubted fact that the use of one 
part of the brain tends to increase the inertia of other parts. 
If our occipital lobes are tense with the exertion of seeing and 
distinguishing the different parts of an objeet, there will be less 
energy in the temporal lobes for hearing, and a greater audi- 
tory stimulus will be necessary to rouse their increased inertia. 
This fact accords with our muscular experiences. The use of 
some muscles drains energy away from others. If we are 
walking, we cannot lift as great a weight as when we are 
standing still. 

What is termed the summation of stimuli is often necessary 
to secure effective attention. Brain cells which have had suffi- 
cient tension developed in them to take them half-way on the 



ATTENTION, NUTRITION, AND FATIGUE 69 

road to rousing attention often sink back into quiescence if 
the stimulus is not sufficiently intense, continuous, or added to 
by other stimuli. The writer, who extremely dislikes the 
flakes of lamp-black, as well as the odour caused by a lamp turned 
too high, was busy one evening while a cloud of the sooty 
smoke was pouring out of the chimney. He was for some time 
unaware of the fact. There was first a slight noise due to the 
intensely heated current of air. This stimulus did not attract 
attention. Next, there was a slight flickering which he failed 
to heed. There was added to this a strong odour, and still the 
sum was not sufficient. Finally, when the flakes of soot began 
to fall thickly on his paper and hand, he noticed the condition 
of the lamp. The sum of all these stimuli was necessary to 
attract his attention. There is an analogy between this and 
lifting a stone which requires four men to raise. One man 
may tug away without lifting it, so may three, but when the 
fourth man adds his strength, the stone is raised. 

Men who engage in any kind of business are often called 
upon to apply the principle of the summation of stimuli. A 
striking show-window, displaying a variety of wares, will often 
attract one's attention so strongly that he will enter, although 
an adjacent store which makes less display really has a better 
stock. We frequently do not buy from the first, second, or 
third fruit vender that we pass. Attention is meanwhile de- 
veloping, and we purchase inferior fruit at a higher price from 
a man farther on. Commercial travellers say that it is often 
an advantage to have a man with the same line of stock canvass 
a town just before they come. He overcomes the inertia of 
attention, and thoughts arise of the profit from handling that 
line, coupled with fears that another travelling man may not 
soon put in an appearance. When a second man does come, 
the tradesman is frequently ready to buy. A commercial 



70 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

traveller recently said that he sold the same line of goods to a 
dealer in hats at an average of a twenty per cent higher price 
than another agent had offered them a few days before. The 
brain is to a certain extent like a soil in which things must 
germinate and ripen before they can produce results. 

There is an important deduction concerning sleep to be 
drawn from the study of the summation of stimuli. It by no 
means follows because three men could not lift a certain stone, 
that they were not at work trying to raise it. When stimuli 
pour into the sensory brain tracts of a sleeper, it must not be 
inferred that the cells are not thereby thrown into activity 
because consciousness is not affected. The majority of brain 
work is done below the threshold of consciousness, but it is 
nevertheless work, and all work involves wear and tear. In 
many of our large cities, the sensory brain tracts never have 
complete rest at any time during the twenty-four hours. The 
rumble of traffic on the paved streets assails the auditory tract 
of the sleeper all night long. The excitement spreads from 
these cells and radiates out along the nerve fibres, causing 
dreams. The sleeper awakes in the morning with a tired, 
jaded feeling, and is consequently unable to do the best work 
of which he might have been capable. The effect of light can 
be distinctly felt through the eyelids of a sleeper, and the oc- 
cipital lobes are thereby set in action. The brilliant electric 
lights with which the streets of a city are illumined, are re- 
sponsible for much brain action of this kind. Either the room 
must be so closed as almost to exclude air, or the stimulus 
from light must be felt during all the sleeping hours. One of 
the many reasons why the country is so healthy is because of 
the comparative absence of stimuli during the night. The 
brain is not goaded into action during sleep. Those are to 
be envied whose suburban homes allow them the quiet of the 



ATTENTION, NUTRITION, AND FATIGUE 71 

country at night and the benefits of the city by day. If we 
are compelled to pass our lives in the city, we should be care- 
ful to have our sleeping rooms where as few stimuli as possible 
may register themselves on our brains. If we do not, our 
central nervous systems will never be in a condition to do 
their best. 

The question has been often asked, To how many things can 
we attend at one time ? The physicist puts the query in this 
way : How many different points in the brain can affect con- 
sciousness at the same time? Until quite recently, attempts 
were made to settle the first question by an appeal to meta- 
physical theories. The soul was a simple indivisible unit, it 
was said, and as such it was impossible for it to contemplate 
more than one thing at a time. Then a psychologist sug- 
gested that such a theory would exclude the possibility of 
comparison, which necessitates attending to at least two ob- 
jects at the same time. Finally a physiological psychologist 
determined to see if actual experiments would not be of value, 
as in the science of physics. A narrow blackboard was devised, 
down which a screen would slide, disclosing, as it dropped, a 
space about six inches square, on which different letters were 
marked. This space was left unclosed for about eight one- 
hundredths of a second, which is too short a time for the 
attention to wander consecutively from point to point. 

From four to five disconnected letters or numerals are thus 
immediately perceived. The question is thus settled that it is 
possible for us to attend to five simple disconnected things 
at the same time. These do not represent the sum total of 
objects in consciousness, but only those in the focus or point 
of most distinct consciousness. Just as we call that part of 
the retina most sensitive to light the yellow spot, so we might 
metaphorically term attention the yellow spot of consciousness. 



J2 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

At a slight distance from the centre of vision, there are objects 
which we see with less distinctness. These decrease in clear- 
ness as we go farther from the centre. Beyond the circum- 
ference of vision they are not seen at all. The same is true 
of consciousness. Objects vary in distinctness by a regular 
gradation, until we pass beyond the twilight fringe to the 
regions of complete darkness. 

It is probable that strong attention and tense activity in 
brain cells are correlated. Some persons with poor circula- 
tion and insufficiently nourished brains never know what really 
distinct attention is. The consciousness of such people is 
hazy, indistinct, like objects seen in a fog. It is probable 
that if the consciousness of different people could be laid 
side by side for comparison, we should see many gradations 
of distinctness, from noonday brightness to the glimmering 
twilight of almost habitual absent-mindedness. Many persons 
must be asked a question twice before their dull, poorly nour- 
ished brains are sufficiently roused to respond. 

Numerous facts impress on us the truth that the nourishment 
of the central nervous system is an especially important pre- 
liminary requisite to its training. After the nutrition of the 
body has suffered through a fever or indigestion, the memory 
is always impaired. The nerve cells are nourished only by the 
I circulating blood, hence anything that affects the activity of the 
heart or the quality of the blood also affects the energy with 
which the brain and the spinal cord can do their work. Per- 
sons who have cold feet, due to sluggish circulation, almost 
always complain of poor memories. We have seen that fatigue 
S (p. 63) sometimes shrinks the nucleus of a cell fifty per cent. 
Nutrition of the very best kind is necessary to enable those 
/■ cells repeatedly to regain their former volume. Their very 
integrity must suffer if such nutriment is not forthcoming. 



ATTENTION, NUTRITION, AND FATIGUE 73 

Those who labour much with their brains need a more gener- 
ous diet than any other class of people. Meat and fruits, 
combined with the proper exercise, should be eaten in abun- 
dance. The majority of brain-workers either undereat or do 
not eat the right kind of food. 

Ribot thus emphasizes the importance of nutrition for the 
central nervous system : 

" All forms of memory, from the highest to the lowest, have 
for their groundwork dynamic associations between the nerve 
elements and special modifications of these elements, at least 
of the cells. These modifications, resulting from a first im- 
pression, are retained by no inert matter — they do not resem- 
ble the impress of a seal on wax. They are impressed upon 
living matter. Now all living tissues are ever in process of molec- 
ular renewal, nerve tissue more than any other, and in nerve 
tissue the gray substance more than the white, as is proved by 
the extraordinary abundance of blood vessels pervading it. 
Now, since the modifications persist, it follows that the arrange- 
ment of the molecules of new-formed tissue must exactly re- 
produce the type of the effete molecules to which they succeed. 
Memory is directly dependent on nutrition. 

" But not only have these cells the property of self-nutrition : 
they also possess, at least during a portion of their life, the 
power of reproduction. ... All physiologists hold this repro- 
duction to be simply a form of nutrition ; therefore the basis of 
memory is nutrition — the vital process par excelle?ice. . . . 

" This normal condition of the brain being granted, it is not 
enough that impressions be received ; they must be fixed, or- 
ganically registered, incrusted, so to speak ; they must become 
a permanent modification of the brain ; the modifications im- 
pressed upon the nerve cells and nerve filaments, and the 
dynamic associations between these elements must be made 



74 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

stable. This result can be produced only by nutrition. The 
brain, and particularly the gray matter, receives an enormous 
volume of blood. In no other part of the body is the nutri- 
tive function so active or so rapid. We know not the inner 
mechanism of this function. The minutest histological research 
is unable to trace the arrangements and rearrangements of the 
molecules. We know only the effects — all beside is but induc- 
tion. But all sorts of facts go to show the close connection 
between nutrition and memory. 

" It is matter of every-day observation that children learn 
with wonderful facility, and that anything, as languages, which 
calls only for memory, is readily learned by them. We know, 
furthermore, that habits — that is to say, one form of memory 
— are far more easily formed in childhood, in youth, than in 
maturity. At that period of life, so great is the activity of the 
nutritive process that new connections are rapidly formed. In 
the aged, on the contrary, a rapid erTacement of new impres- 
sions coincides with a considerable decline of this activity. 

"These physiological and psychological facts all show that 
there exists between nutrition and retention the relation of 
cause and effect. There is exact coincidence between their 
periods of rise and fall. Variations short or long in the one 
are repeated in the other. If the one be active, or moderate, 
or languishing, so is the other. Hence the retention of recol- 
lections must not be regarded metaphysically, and as a ' state 
of the soul ' subsisting no one knows where, but as an acquired 
state of the cerebral organ implying the possibility of states of 
consciousness whenever the conditions of consciousness are 
present." 1 

The writer has said elsewhere : " If - a person lives on a 
skimmed-milk diet, he will think skimmed-milk thoughts, 
l Ribot's Diseases of Memory, Chaps. I. and V. 



ATTENTION, NUTRITION, AND FATIGUE 75 

That nation proverbially known as ' beef-eaters ' has fur- 
nished the world the greatest literature of all time." 1 

In concluding this chapter, the apparently paradoxical state- 
ment should be emphasized that nutrition of the best kind de- 
pends on a state of antecedent fatigue. When nerve cells have 
been exercised, but not overfatigued, they are then in the very 
best condition for receiving fresh nutriment. We sometimes 
see persons, who seldom stir out of the house, pick things over 
at the table without eating scarcely anything, and we tell them 
that if they would exercise, they would have an appetite and 
grow stronger. Analogous advice should be given in the case 
of the nervous system. Nerve cells should be exercised to the 
point of reasonable fatigue, so as to be put in the proper condi- 
tion for being made stronger by the nutriment which they will 
then be in a condition to assimilate. 

1 Halleck's Psychology and Psychic Culture, p. 53. 



CHAPTER V 

Environment and Training 

Environment is a factor of special importance in the train- 
ing of the central nervous system. Some persons have made 
the strange assertion that the individual would develop, as far 
as his potential capacities would allow him, no matter what his 
environment. They say that a child who has the potential 
capacity for speaking correctly, will use good English, although 
his environment would not allow him to hear a dozen gram- 
matical sentences until he is fifteen ; that a person would per- 
form as much in the course of his life, no matter whether he 
lived in the tropics or in the temperate zone ; that an orange 
tree will produce as much fruit in Labrador as in Cuba. 

The number of those making such assertions is fortunately 
growing fewer. The history of every clime refutes them. 
Even schoolboys notice that the world's great authors and 
inventors are from a temperate climate, and that the vegetation 
of the frigid zone is stunted. 

A simple experiment will enable us to determine the power 
of environment in the development of the same organism. If 
we take a tadpole, just beginning to shows signs of developing 
into a frog, and put him in a vessel of water which is kept in a 
dark room, at the end of thirty days we shall notice no percep- 
tible advance toward froghood. If for one day we then admit 
light into his environment, there will be more advance than 

76 



ENVIRONMENT AND TRAINING 



77 



during the preceding thirty. If he is again kept away from 
light, his development will be retarded for an indefinite length 
of time. If he is finally put back in the sunlight, he will never 
make the frog which a more suitable early environment would 
have produced. It is plain that such a tadpole has something 
to develop, and it is further evident that those inherent capac- 
ities do not develop well unless the environment is suitable. 
The Mammoth Cave furnishes specimens of blind fish. They 
have rudimentary eyes, which have never developed in the 
absence of light. 

We have already seen (p. 47) that human brains contain 
more or less undeveloped cells. It is impossible to see how 
these cells can fully develop, unless the environment affords 
the proper exercise. The auditory brain tract of a child may 
have wonderful potential capacities, but if there are no musical 
sounds in his environment, the tract will not fully develop. If 
we study the youth of great musicians, we shall find them 
living in a world of musical sound, in most cases, before the 
age of ten. 

Beyond question, some kinds of environment afford more 
chances than others for the central nervous system to develop. 
While environment is in some respects relative to each indi- 
vidual, yet certain situations are in general better for the grow- 
ing organism. A crowded tenement house is not a favourable 
place for the development of the nervous system of any child. 
Any youth is to be pitied who has never spent a part of his 
time in the country. 

The city has many drawbacks for bringing up children. In 
the first place, it is cramped. Only those rooms into which 
the sunlight can pour, ought ever to be used for sitting or 
sleeping rooms. The sun, however, has small chance at the 
majority of city apartments. Space is also so precious that the 



78 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

most of the rooms are small. Some suggestive experiments 
have been made which emphasize the baneful effect of cramped 
quarters on growing animal life. A row of vessels, regularly 
increasing in size, has been set on the same shelf in a room. 
These have been filled with water, and a growing tadpole or a 
pond-snail placed in each vessel. Although all were treated 
alike, so far as the capacity of the vessel would allow, at the 
end of a certain period it was found that each tadpole or snail 
had developed proportionally to the size of the vessel ; that is, 
the smallest tadpoles or snails were found in the smallest ves- 
sels ; the next larger, in the next larger vessel. In connection 
with this, one can scarcely help thinking of the thousands of 
children whose playground is the little back-yard, frequently 
not so large as a good-sized room. It would be unfair to 
expect their development to be more than commensurate with 
their surroundings. 

The country, especially in the summer time, appeals to all 
the senses more effectually than the city ever can. Everything, 
from the song of birds to the odour of flowers, is presented in 
its most appropriate natural setting. The wide expanse of 
field and wood allows full scope to motor activity. As we 
have seen, the motor brain tract is as important in a world of 
action as any other part of the nervous system. 

It would be hard to state wherein the country in the sum- 
mer time fails to afford the proper stimulus for developing the 
growing nervous system. Even an ordinary poultry yard may 
prove a developing factor in the environment of a boy who has 
been trained to habits of observation. The writer recently 
read a very interesting article illustrative of this very point. It 
is hard to see how better vacation material could have been 
furnished two boys for developing their senses and power of 
discrimination. The article says : " Living in Buffalo, the 



ENVIRONMENT AND TRAINING 79 

writer and a brother, who was an inseparable companion, 
boarded through the whole or a part of several seasons, some- 
times six months together, on a farm in Orleans County. Our 
time was entirely our own, and, as we found little companion- 
ship among the busy country lads, many days might have hung 
heavily on our hands had we not been wholly content to spend 
the greater part of them among the chickens and the turkeys ; 
only one season we added ducks. Our parents had taught us 
to love and observe nature, and we were well read for our 
years in natural history. What was of more importance, we 
had been led from early childhood to be exact and painstaking 
in all things. Our play with toys was tiresome to most boys 
by reason of its carefulness. Under such circumstances it will 
not, perhaps, be thought strange that either of us could tell 
every fowl, young or old, toward the end of each summer, by 
its name, and nearly all of them by their cackling. Usually, 
there were about one hundred on the premises. We not only 
knew their general appearance as we would familiar faces, but 
I think there is no doubt that a glimpse of even the half of 
any head in the barnyard would have been enough for instant 
recognition. We knew every hen's nest when the egg yield 
was two dozen a day, and my brother could promptly and with 
certainty sort out ten dozen eggs and tell which hen laid every 
one. When there were twenty half-grown cockerels on the 
farm, we could readily name any one which crowed out of 
sight." 

The boys even studied motor inhibition in a rooster. When 
he started to crow, they threw food in front of him, but this 
was devoured by other fowls before he had finished crowing. 
The article continues : " His indignation was so amusing that 
we fell into the habit of teasing him in this way, until at last 
the old fellow began to practise choking down the rest of his 



80 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

crow when corn was thrown in front of him. Gradually he 
managed to stop more and more quickly, and in the end he 
would swallow his voice with a gulp, and snatch a bit of food 
as promptly as if he had not been crowing at all." 

These boys also watched the initiation of motor action by 
the sense stimuli which kernels of corn furnished : " A half- 
brother of this rooster learned very quickly to crow for corn, 
once for every kernel. He used to stand before us and crow 
as regularly as clockwork, always stopping for his reward, and 
never expecting a second kernel until he had crowed again. 
When almost satisfied, he waited much longer between times, 
and at last walked contentedly away." 

On another occasion, this same barn gave them a suggestion 
for practising their imaginations : " We dyed a speckled cock 
red with carpet-dye, glued a stiff, high comb of paper on his 
frost-amputated stump, and tied up his wattles under his 
throat. This overdid the business to such an extent that the 
other roosters fled from him in horror, as if he had been a 
hawk, and the Devonshire farmhand, looking at him in amaze- 
ment, exclaimed ' Byes, what fresh bird have ye brought about 
here?'" 1 

This entire article, which is as interesting as a romance, 
illustrates the fine effects of a change of environment as a 
stimulus to training the senses. We find evidence in Milton's 
poetry that he was like these boys, affected by his environment in 
the country. The denizens of the barnyard also impressed him. 

"While the cock with lively din, 
Scatters the rear of darkness thin, 
And to the stack or the barn door, 
Stoutly struts his dames before." 

1 Karr's " Mental Traits in the Poultry Yard," Popular Science Monthly, 
September, 1888. 



ENVIRONMENT AND TRAINING 8 1 

It is pleasant to think that Shakspere also found such sen- 
sory training in his environment. In his greatest play he 
says : 

" I have heard, 
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, 
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat 
Awake the god of day. 11 

In order that the fullest development of any human being 
may result, there must be an occasional change in the environ- 
ment. Darwin recognized the benefits of judicious change in 
the case of both animal and plant life. He says : " Small 
farmers who hold but little land are convinced that their 
cattle derive great benefit from a change of pasture. In the 
case of plants, the evidence is strong that a great advantage is 
derived from exchanging seeds, tubers, bulbs, and cuttings 
from one soil or place to another as different as possible. . . . 

"As plants after once germinating are fixed to the same 
spot, it might have been anticipated that they would show the 
good effects of a change more plainly than do animals which 
continually wander about; and this apparently is the case. 
Life depending on, or consisting in, an incessant play of the 
most complex forces, it would appear that their action is in 
some way stimulated by slight changes in the circumstances 
to which each organism is exposed. All forces throughout 
nature, as Mr. Herbert Spencer remarks, tend towards an 
equilibrium, and for the life of each organism it is necessary 
that this tendency should be checked." x 

A change in environment is necessary for the development 
of the human nervous system because of this very tendency 
toward equilibrium, of which Spencer speaks. This is the 

1 Darwin's The Variation of Animals and Plants tender Domestication, Vol. 
II., pp. 127, 130. 
G 



82 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

tendency of the nervous system to adjust itself to repeated 
stimuli of the same kind, so that they produce less conscious 
effect. The countryman may become so used to the songs of 
the birds and the sight of the flowers that his ear and eye 
cause only semi-conscious response. We all remember how 
the first leaves of spring delight us. We look at them again 
and again and feel intense pleasure, but our eyes rest half- 
unconsciously on the magnificent foliage of a June forest. The 
countryman will notice far more of the sights of the city than 
its regular inhabitants, but when citizens go into the country, 
their central nervous systems are at first keenly responsive to 
its varied stimuli. It is a matter of common remark that 
persons from a distance must come to point out to us the won- 
ders under our very feet. If we intend to describe a foreign 
country, we should begin as soon as we see it, and before our 
nervous systems are dulled by repetition and begin to respond 
with decreasing consciousness. 

A change in human environment is as important as a change 
of place. We may for some time go along in our old ruts, 
making little advance, when association with a person from a 
distance may suddenly call into action all our latent powers. 
The writer knows a middle-aged man who would have been 
famous as a writer, instead of living unknown in a country vil- 
lage, had he felt the proper human stimulus and attrition. He 
has often said that if Macaulay had known no more stimulat- 
ing environment, the wonderful Essays would never have been 
written. A man of genius will change, to a certain extent, all 
who come in contact with him ; if of sufficient genius, he may 
almost usher in an Elizabethan Age. He gives no new poten- 
tial capacities, but he develops latent ones. This is the reason 
why one teacher may get so much, and another so little, from 
the same class. 



ENVIRONMENT AND TRAINING 83 

. Sir Francis Galton appreciated the power in human environ- 
ment when he said : " Those sudden eras of great intellectual 
progress cannot be due to any alteration in the natural faculties 
of the race, because there has not been time for that, but to 
their being directed in productive channels. Most of the 
leisure of the men of every nation is spent in rounds of reit- 
erated actions ; if it could be spent in continuous advance 
along new lines of research among unexplored regions, vast 
progress would be sure to be made. It has been the privilege 
of this generation to have had fresh fields of research pointed 
out to them by Darwin, and to have undergone a new intellect- 
ual birth under the inspiration of his fertile genius ! " x 

No environment can be satisfactory which allows mere sen- 
sory development and does not demand sufficient motor 
responses; or, in other words, sufficient action to keep one 
from deteriorating. Sir William Grove saw this truth strikingly 
exemplified in the case of animals. Speaking of the environ- 
ment of the rabbit, he says : " If it gets a luxuriant pasture, it 
dies of repletion. If it gets too little, it dies of inanition. To 
keep itself healthy, it must exert itself for its food ; this, and 
perhaps the avoiding its enemies, gives it exercise and care, 
brings all its organs into use, and thus it acquires its most perfect 
form of life. I have witnessed this effect myself, and that is the 
reason why I choose the rabbit as an example. An estate in 
Somersetshire, which I once took temporarily, was on the slope 
of the Mendip Hills. The rabbits on one part of it, viz. that 
on the hillside, were in perfect condition, not too fat nor too 
thin, sleek, active, and vigorous, and yielding to their antag- 
onists, myself and family, excellent food. Those in the valley, 
where the pasturage was rich and luxuriant, were all diseased, 
most of them unfit for human food, and many lying dead on 

1 Galton's Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, p. 179. 



84 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

the fields. They had not to struggle for life, their short life 
was miserable, and their death early ; they wanted the sweet 
uses of adversity — that is, of antagonism. The same story 
may be told of other animals." 1 

Environment must, therefore, afford sufficient stimuli to 
develop the senses and to give room for sufficient motor action 
in the growing nervous system. Further, the environment 
must be sufficiently exacting to compel the proper amount of 
action. For a growing nervous organism, the country would, 
in consequence of these conclusions, seem the better. 

Let us examine some noted authors to see if they uphold 
these theories. A great author must possess well-trained senses 
as well as be a man of action. Let those who think writing 
does not require energetic action, actually write a book. The 
majority of such will probably clamour for something easier 
before they have finished. A great poet must be something 
more than a dreamer : he must be a man of energetic action. 
We may therefore contend that great writers are a fair body of 
men to examine, for both their sensory and motor brain tracts 
must be well developed. Before Shakspere could write : 

". . . daffodils 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty . . ." 

the daffodils and the swallows must have been impressed upon 
his senses in that incomparable scenery of Warwickshire. 
Before these materials found themselves in a finished drama, 
there must have been severe action on the part of the writer to 
select, condense, arrange, and create from faint suggestions. 
If any one thinks the opposite, let him prove it by his own 
productions. When we examine the lives of noted men, we 
i Antagonism : a Lecture before the Royal Institution of Great Britain 
April 2o, 1888. 



ENVIRONMENT AND TRAINING 85 

shall learn what kind of environment has been a factor in 
developing them. If we find any factor common, to a great 
extent, we have made a discovery of practical worth for devel- 
oping a human being. 

Amid the obscurity in which Chaucer's early life is wrapped, 
some things are clear. We know that although he was born in 
London, he spent a part of his youth in the country. He was 
page to a princess, who spent a portion of each year at her 
country seat at Hatfield in Yorkshire. Apprenticeship as a 
page demanded great activity. The country so impressed his 
youthful sensory brain tracts, that the man was able to picture 
some of its aspects with wonderful vividness. What he saw is 
to-day affecting us, from the daisy to the sweet showers of 
April falling on a world awaking to new and happy life. 
Chaucer was also considerable of a traveller, visiting France 
when he was about twenty, and Italy when he was a little over 
thirty. We notice, then, that he had in his youth both city 
and country life, and that his environment changed before his 
nervous system became dulled and unresponsive to any one 
kind. 

Shakspere's case is so important that it demands special 
investigation in another chapter. We may say here that his 
youth was passed amid the finest rural scenery in England, and 
that his young manhood found him in active London. 

John Milton was born in London, but he was fortunate 
enough to have five years of pure country environment at the 
time he was entering on full manhood. One of his biographers 
says : " The country retirement in which the elder Milton had 
fixed himself was the little village of Horton, situated in that 
southernmost angle of the county of Buckingham which in- 
sinuates itself between Berks and Middlesex. . . . There was 
no lack of water and wood, meadow and pasture, closes and 



86 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

open fields, with the regal towers of Windsor, ' bosom'd high in 
tufted trees,' to crown the landscape." Of the poems written 
there, the same writer says : " All rural sights and sounds and 
smells are here blended in that ineffable combination which 
once or twice, perhaps, in our lives has saluted our young 
senses before their perceptions were blunted by alcohol, by 
lust or ambition, or diluted by the social distractions of great 
cities." : 

As we ask whether this environment was favourable to activity, 
we learn that during those five years in the country he pro- 
duced L' Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas. Some 
critics think Comus the finest of Milton's productions. Almost 
all unite in calling Lycidas the high-water mark of lyrical 
poetry. Milton then left Horton and travelled on the Con- 
tinent. Returning, he became one of the most active statesmen 
during the period of the Commonwealth. At the age of forty- 
three he was totally blind. It was well that his environment 
had already given him sufficient material for the Paradise Lost. 

John Locke, the philosopher, was born in a small village in 
the north of Somersetshire. A biographer says : " Locke, then, 
may be regarded as having been fortunate in early surround- 
ings. Born in one of the more charming of the rural districts 
of England, not far, however, from a city which was then one 
of the most important centres of commerce and politics, . . . 
there seems to have been nothing in his early life to retard or 
mar the development of his genius." 2 

John Bunyan was born in the hamlet of Elstow, a mile and 
a quarter from the town of Bedford. Environment did all in its 
power to make him the author of The Pilgrim's Progress. He 
was born of very sensible parents, who did their part well. 
Bedford had been the scene of an incident which must have 

1 Pattison's Life of Milton, Chap. II. 2 Minto's Life of Locke, Chap. I. 



ENVIRONMENT AND TRAINING 8? 

deeply impressed Bunyan's boyhood, and made him feel the 
power of conscience. Froude, commenting on the traditions 
of Bedfordshire, says of this special event : " One of them, 
which had deeply impressed the imagination of the Midland 
counties, was the story of ' Old Tod.' This man came one day 
into court in the Summer Assizes at Bedford ... to demand 
justice upon himself as a felon. No one had accused him, but 
God's judgment was not to be escaped, and he was forced to 
accuse himself. 'My lord,' said Old Tod to the judge, 'I 
have been a thief from my childhood. I have been a thief 
ever since. There has not been a robbery committed these 
many years, within so many miles of this town, but I have 
been privy to it.' The judge, after a conference, agreed to in- 
dict him of certain felonies which he had acknowledged. He 
pleaded guilty, implicating his wife along with him, and they 
were both hanged." 1 

The allegorical warfare of life was more deeply impressed 
upon Bunyan by the Civil War, in which he was an actual sol- 
dier. The Restoration saw the officers come, tear him guilt- 
less away from his little blind daughter, and shut him up in 
squalid Bedford jail for twelve years. As in the case of Mil- 
ton, environment had already given Bunyan sufficient material, 
which confinement in that gloomy jail enabled him to trans- 
mute into The Pilgrim's Progress. 

Passing over Dryden, Addison, and Fielding, who were born 
in the country ; Swift and Pope, who spent much of their time 
in the country ; Defoe, who had all kinds of environment in 
his extensive travels ; Dr. Johnson, who was born in a small 
town, — we come to authors nearer our time. 

Sir Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, but spent a part of 
his boyhood on a farm at Sandyknowe, which was situated 

1 Froude's Life of Bunyan, Chap. I. 



88 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

amid a romantic scenery. Speaking of this time of his life, 
Scott says : " My health was by this time a good deal con- 
firmed by the country air, and the influence of that impercep- 
tible and unfatiguing exercise to which the good sense of my 
grandfather had subjected me ; for when the day was fine I was 
usually carried out and laid down beside an old shepherd, 
among the crags or rocks round which he fed his sheep. Here 
I delighted to roll about on the grass all day long in the midst 
of the flock, and the sort of fellowship I thus formed with the 
sheep and lambs impressed my mind with a degree of affec- 
tionate feeling towards them which lasted throughout life. . . . 
I, who in a city had probably been condemned to hopeless and 
helpless decrepitude, was now a healthy, high-spirited, and, my 
lameness apart, a sturdy child." At the age of fifteen Scott 
first saw the vale of Perth. He says of it : " Since that hour, 
the recollection of that inimitable landscape has possessed the 
strongest influence over my mind, and retained its place as a 
memorable thing." Readers of his poems and romances have 
reason to be thankful for his early environment. 

William Wordsworth was born in a small town in Cumber- 
land, and he passed the most of his boyhood as well as of his 
later life in the wonderful Lake District. A biographer says of 
him : " Born at Cockermouth, on the outskirts of the district, 
his mind was gradually led on to its beauty ; and his first recol- 
lections were of Derwent's grassy holms and rocky falls, with 
Skiddaw, ' bronzed with deepest radiance,' towering in the east- 
ern sky. Sent to school at Hawkshead at eight years old, 
Wordsworth's scene was transferred to the other extremity of 
the Lake District. It was in this quaint old town on the banks 
of Esthwaite Water, that the ' fair seed-time of his soul ' was 
passed." 1 It should be noted that he travelled on the Conti- 
1 Myers' Life of Wordsworth, Chap. IV. 



ENVIRONMENT AND TRAINING 89 

nent as well as over England, and hence felt the beneficial 
effects of change. 

Coleridge was born in the small town of Ottery St. Mary in 
Devonshire. He has told us that " so deeply impressed upon 
his mind are the scenes of his childhood that he can never 
close his eyes in the sun without seeing afresh the waters of 
the Otter, its willowy banks, the plank that crossed it, and the 
sand of varied tints that lay in its bed." In his early man- 
hood, he and Wordsworth lived for a while only a short dis- 
tance apart near the Quantock Hills in Somersetshire. While 
roaming over those hills in company with Wordsworth and 
stimulated both by him and by the sight of the sea, Coleridge 
thought out the poem of The Ancient Mariner. The envi- 
ronment, both natural and human, reacted on Wordsworth, and 
he did excellent work. Afterward we find both these poets 
living near together in the Lake District. Coleridge also 
travelled abroad and changed his environment frequently. 

Byron was born in London, but was soon after taken to Aber- 
deen. At the age of eleven he went to live for a while at the 
romantic Newstead Abbey in Nottingham. He also travelled 
widely over the Continent. 

Shelley was born in a country home in Sussex. Later in life 
he used to amuse himself by drawing the fir-trees and cedars 
which grew around his birthplace. He went to school at vari- 
ous places. For a while after his marriage he lived in the Lake 
District and in other picturesque places before going abroad. 

Macaulay was born in a Leicestershire country home. His 
travels in India enabled him to write two of his finest essays, 
— on Warren Hastings and Clive. Carlyle was born in a little 
country town in Scotland. De Quincey first saw the light in 
a fine home in the suburbs of Manchester, and he lived for 
some time in the Lake District. Ruskin was born in London, 



90 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

but he says : " The first thing which I remember as an event 
in life, was being taken by my nurse to the brow of Friar's 
Crag on Dervventwater." Tennyson was born in Lincolnshire 
in the parish of Somersby, containing about fifty inhabitants. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem. On one side of 
the town lay the open country ; on the other, the sea. To the 
west of his home was Gallows Hill, associated with the most 
weird stories and terrible persecutions in America. At the age 
of fourteen he was taken to a forest home in Maine, where he 
says that he lived like a bird of the air. The environment of 
his native land was supplemented by extensive travel abroad. 

A Scottish critic says that no one has taught more people to 
love poetry than Longfellow. The environment of a man who 
has brought an added pleasure into the life of so many, is 
worthy of notice. Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine. Of 
his birthplace, a biographer says : " Portland, the ' Forest City,' 
is beautiful in these days of ours, and will always be beautiful, 
with its great gulf of rolling blue, Cape Elizabeth at one horn, 
and at the other the miniature archipelago called Casco Bay, — 
the low hills of Munjoy and Bramhall piled up behind the 
houses, backed again by stretches of the noblest woodland. 
Every street has its trees." 1 These scenes reappear in the 
poetry of the mature man : 

" Often I think of the beautiful town 
That is seated by the sea ; 
Often in thought go up and down 
The pleasant streets of that dear old town, 
And my youth comes back to me. 

" I can see the shadowy lines of its trees, 
And catch, in sudden gleams, 

1 Robertson's Life of Longfellow, p. 14. 



ENVIRONMENT AND TRAINING 9 1 

The sheen of the far surrounding seas, 
And islands that were the Hesperides 
Of all my boyish dreams. 

" I remember the black wharves and the slips, 
And the sea-tides tossing free ; 
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, 
And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
And the magic of the sea. 
And the voice of that wayward song 
Is singing and saying still : 
' A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. 1 " 

Longfellow travelled abroad and felt the stimulus of a new 
environment. 

England's greatest soldier-statesman, Oliver Cromwell, was 
born in the little town of Huntingdon, surrounded on all sides 
by the green fields. At the age of seventeen he went to Cam- 
bridge University. In temperament, he might have been called 
a " motor " ; that is, one in whom a slight sensory or ideational 
stimulus produced more than the customary motor reaction. 
Fortunately, Cambridge furnished plenty of active games for 
a type of this sort. We find some early biographers com- 
plaining that he paid more attention to football, cudgels, and 
other boisterous games than to his studies. Others also had 
good reason to regret this early motor training, especially 
Charles I., the Irish, and the Scotch. 

John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, was born in the coun- 
try parish of Musbury in Devonshire. At the age of seventeen 
he was an ensign in the foot guards. Not long after, he saw 
service in Tangier, and was fighting in Flanders. He was of 
the " motor " temperament, like Cromwell, and early environ- 
ment was favourable for developing this. 



/ 



92 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

A study of the early history of these eminent men has shown 
that the majority of them had their sensory brain tracts devel- 
oped to a considerable degree by the incomparable stimuli of 
the country. Since there is more room for exercise in the 
country, more green fields in which to romp and play, more 
groves and forests in which to wander, the motor brain tracts 
are likely to receive better training in such tempting environ- 
ment. Again, we notice that nearly all these men travelled 
either in their own land or abroad. This is what we might 
have expected, since a study of the nervous system, and es- 
pecially of the laws of attention, has shown us that unvarying 
stimuli gradually elicit less and less attention, although they 
may be of the very finest sort. A change in this environment 
is occasionally necessary to awaken us thoroughly and to make 
us men of action. But we must beware of thinking that change 
in environment means change of place. In an old place, we 
may fall under the influence of a new stimulus. A new acquaint- 
ance or the works of a writer may inspire us to do things which 
we should never otherwise have attempted. A stagnant neigh- 
bourhood has been the graveyard of many a potential tendency 
toward human action of high merit. 

Before the central nervous system can be properly trained, 
the power of environment must receive more recognition. 
Potential capacities will not become actualities unless the 
environment affords the proper stimuli to develop those germi- 
nal powers. 

How, then, can the nerve cells of poor children in the city 
be trained ? It is needless to deny that absolute poverty is a 
drag, that few of the millions of the poor ever receive sufficient 
stimulus to incite them to change their condition and to rise in 
the world. If, however, a little taste of better things can be 
given, the thirst for more may become insatiable. There are 



ENVIRONMENT AND TRAINING 93 

few cities so large that the children cannot be taken on a Sat- 
urday afternoon, or on a Sunday, if no other time is possible, 
to the country, where the song of the bird, the perfume of the 
flower, the velvety touch of the grass, the sight of the leaves 
and the animals, and the motor responses thereto, will leave 
their lasting imprint upon the impressible nerve cells of the 
child. 



CHAPTER VI 
Age and Training 

In education, the world has not yet practically realized the 
very important truth that youthful nerve cells alone are easily 
modified by training. The old theory that education consists 
solely in modifications in an immaterial entity has worked 
untold damage. It was argued that the immaterial never grew 
old, and that it could be trained as well at one time as at 
another. From this mistaken notion arose such adages as : 
" It is never too late to be what you might have been." It 
would be nearer the truth to say : " It is always too late to be 
what you might have been." With each advancing year, this 
becomes an absolute truth in the case of the vast majority who 
have reached the age of twenty. 

It may be true, as we believe it to be, that education consists 
in developing a mind as well as mere brain cells ; but the mind, 
for its materials, is completely at the mercy of the nervous sys- 
tem. A well-trained nervous system is the greatest friend that 
the mind can have. An ill-trained nervous system is a relent- 
less enemy to the higher mental powers. It follows its victims 
and thwarts their aims until the pitying grave stops it. The 
writer can never forget the despair of a man who had become 
wealthy, and who wished to go into educated society. Early 
associations had trained his motor mechanism of speech to 
say : " He done wrong. I laid down. They set down and 
rested. I could have went." He procured teachers to in- 

94 



AGE AND TRAINING 95 

struct him in the right forms, and he finally learned them so 
that he could write them out correctly after a little study. 
But alas ! he could not talk with his pen or with his fingers. 
The brain cells governing the vocal muscles worked automati- 
cally as they had been early habituated. This automatic work- 
ing was followed, but not preceded, by consciousness. Not 
until after the words had escaped "him, would he know that 
they were wrong. The brain cells in his third left frontal con- 
volution, with the vocal habituation due to them, were an 
enemy watchful and relentless enough to keep him out of 
educated society. 

Roughly speaking, the plasticity of nerve cells is inversely 
proportional to their age. A woodchopper may sharpen his 
axe as well the next week or the next year; a man owning 
mineral land may mine the coal now or wait twenty years, 
as he chooses, knowing that it will not deteriorate. But the 
nervous system can be effectively trained only in youth. An 
adult may be approximately defined as the sum of his youth- 
ful nerve reactions, which tend to perpetuate themselves. 

Youthful nerve cells are like freshly mixed plaster of paris, 
and, like it, they soon lose their plasticity. Anything reason- 
able can be done with the youthful nervous system. If the 
training is deferred, it will soon be too late to accomplish 
much. Habits are early formed, and after they have once be- 
come fixed, they rule us with the grasp of a Titan. " Already 
at the age of twenty-five you see the professional mannerism 
settling down on the young commercial traveller, on the young- 
doctor, on the young minister, on the young counsellor-at-law. 
You see the little lines of cleavage running through the char- 
acter, the tricks of thought, the prejudices, — the ways of the 
'shop,' in a word, — from which the man can by-and-by no 
more escape than his coat-sleeve can suddenly fall into a new 



g6 EDUCATION OF * CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

set of folds. . . . Hardly ever is a language learned after 
twenty, spoken without a foreign accent; hardly ever can a 
youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the 
nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the asso- 
ciations of his growing years." 1 

Investigations of the growth and increase in weight of the 
nervous system have served to emphasize the necessity for 
early training. Vierordt gives the average weight in grammes 
of the male brain at various ages as follows : 

New-born child 381 grammes. 

1 year 945 grammes. 

5 years 1263 grammes. 

10 years 1408 grammes. 

15 years 1490 grammes. 

20 years . 1445 grammes. 

25 years 1431 grammes. 

These figures show that the male brain attains its maximum 
weight by the age of fifteen. The female brain reaches its 
maximum slightly earlier, between ten and fourteen. 

It is, however, probable that in the most favoured classes 
in the community, and especially in the cases of those who 
keep the brain properly exercised, the brain weight may keep 
on increasing until the age of twenty, and possibly to a later 
period. Venn 2 measured the heads of Cambridge students 
at various times and found that the head increased in size 
during the entire course. This has not been shown to be true 
except in the cases of those who give their brains regular 
exercise in a judicious way. It is highly probable that such 
exercise tends to prolong the period of nerve plasticity. The 
brains furnishing the weights given above did not come from 

1 James' Principles of Psychology, Vol. I., p. 121. 2 Nature, 1890. 



AGE AND TRAINING 



97 



the most favoured classes, but they probably afford good 
average data. 

The brain certainly begins to decrease in weight in the latter 
part of middle life and before old age can be fairly said to 
have begun. No definite time can be set for the beginning 
of this decrease ; indeed, it probably begins at different times 
in different people. The brain weights of eminent men who 
died late in life, tend to show that in their case loss in weight 
was deferred to a late period. Their brains were probably at 
birth of a superior kind, but the right exercise, judiciously con- 
tinued into old age, may have been a factor in postponing the 
decline. Examinations of the convolution immediately in front 
of the fissure of Rolando have shown that the fibres of associa- 
tion increase in number until about the age of thirty-three, 
when a decided decrease begins. No region of the brain 
shows an increase in these fibres after thirty-three, although 
decrease does not begin in some convolutions until consider- 
ably later. As these fibres are required to explain the physi- 
cal side of thinking, and the association and correlation of 
activity in various parts of the brain, we should naturally sup- 
pose that they would not begin to decrease in number until 
late in life. The fact that they do not increase after thirty- 
three agrees with the conclusions of those who believe that 
no one gets an absolutely new idea into his head after that 
time. 

Youthful nerve cells possess a remarkable power of regen- 
eration and recuperation. A young person recovers quickly 
from over-fatigue. The old frequently never completely re- 
cover from such fatigue, or if they recover at all, progress 
is very slow. Now, fatigue is a condition of advancement, 
for this comes as the result of work. The quicker the recu- 
peration, the sooner can the work be again resumed. In this 



98 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

respect, especially, does youth have a vast advantage over 
age. 

Darwin calls attention to the fact that the youthful cells of 
some of the lower order of animals can reproduce lost parts of 
the body. He says : " Spallanzini cut off the legs and tail of the 
same salamander six times successively, and Bonnet did so eight 
times ; and on each occasion the limbs were reproduced on 
the exact line of amputation, with no part deficient or in excess. 
An allied animal, the axolotl, had a limb bitten off, which was 
reproduced in an abnormal condition, but when this was 
amputated, it was replaced by a perfect limb. The new limbs 
in these cases bud forth, and are developed in the same man- 
ner as during the regular development of a young animal. . . . 

"The power of re-growth is generally much greater during 
the youth of an animal or during the earlier stages of its devel- 
opment than during maturity. The larvae or tadpoles of the 
Batrachians are capable of reproducing lost members, but not 
so the adults. Mature insects have no power of re-growth, 
excepting in one order, whilst the larvae of many kinds have 
this power." l While youthful human cells cannot reproduce 
an amputated leg, they do speedily repair many minor injuries 
from bruises, cuts, and burns. After a period of very fatiguing 
mental work, youthful brain cells will rise from a night's sound 
sleep with all the freshness of a spring morning, whereas an 
older person may complain of weariness all the next day or 
even longer. If we watch a wearied child, we may notice the 
precise physical expression of old age appear on his counte- 
nance. A night's sleep will make the little fellow young again. 
The difference between a young and an old nerve cell does not 
consist in the supposed fact that the one does not, while the 

1 Darwin's The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 
Vol. II., p. 357. 



AGE AND TRAINING 



99 



other does, become exhausted. Both become exhausted, but 
the young nerve cell speedily regains its lost strength, while 
the old does not. Again, judicious exercise may speedily 
enlarge the storage facilities of a young cell and make it 
stronger than before. 

Early exercise of any kind seems to change the nerve matter 
in surprising ways, so that its entire subsequent reactions toward 
certain objects may be afterward changed. Darwin gives 
some striking instances of this : " An animal when once accus- 
tomed to an unnatural diet, which can generally be effected 
only during youth, dislikes its proper food, as Spallanzini found 
to be the case with a pigeon which had been long fed on meat. 
The caterpillars of the Bombyx hesperus feed in a state of nat- 
ure on the leaves of the Cafe diable, but, after having been 
reared on the Ailanthus, they would not touch the Cafe diable, 
and actually died of hunger." 1 Human beings afford instances 
almost as striking as these. If a child is brought up on highly 
seasoned foods and artificial drinks, he can hardly endure a 
change later, although his former diet may be ruining his 
health. 

The only reason why socialism does not become more ram- 
pant is because the poor are early habituated to their lot. A 
life of fashion, or any mode of living which made different 
demands on them, would be irksome. If they started to break 
loose in some unknown direction, they would either be at a 
loss to determine where to go, or if they reached some new 
situation, they would find themselves unsuited to it. Early 
training inexorably determines one's attitude toward the world, 
and even the comfort one takes in this or in that sphere. 
Sailors early accustomed to the cramped quarters, to the mo- 

1 Darwin's The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 
Vol. II., p. 294. 



100 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

notony and the hard fare of the sea, have declined easier 
positions ashore and looked forward with pleasure to the day 
of sailing. Men sentenced to prison while young have begged 
to be readmitted after they have been released. They had 
grown accustomed to the prison routine, and they found no 
place into which they could fit in the outside world. 

We ought not only to begin training the nervous system 
early, but this training should be of the right kind. Those 
persons who accustom their brains to respond only to simple 
sensori-motor reactions, will soon be left behind in the struggle 
for existence and displaced by others. By simple sensori- 
motor action we mean cases where a simple sensation is fol- 
lowed by an invariable motor reaction of the same kind. 
Instances of this are to be found in all highly specialized 
manual work of the routine kind, such as cutting out the heel 
of a shoe, making one special part of a watch, or of any other 
kind of machinery, rolling cigars, sawing out buttons, or even 
typewriting. The latter furnishes a good example of simple 
sensori-motor action, because the sight of the letter on the 
keyboard is to be followed by the invariable muscular action 
in striking it. 

Sir Crichton Browne found that English weavers, button- 
makers, and potters, who for the most part employ simple 
sensori-motor action, arrive at their maximum proficiency at 
thirty years of age. Whenever they have a certain sensation 
from their work, whether of sight, sound, or touch, the motor 
reaction following this sensation is of the same kind. Because 
of this so-called expertness in one line, the workmen do, in- 
deed, improve rapidly for a limited period. It is further true 
that the world demands this expertness and that life furnishes 
young people in sufficient quantity to take the place of the 
old, the moment they begin to show signs of a decline. If one 



AGE AND TRAINING IOI 

can find a niche in life where he is not called on to respond 
to these over-specialized simple sensori-motor actions, he by all 
means should endeavour to occupy such a place of broader 
activity. Over-specialization in one direction must mean cor- 
responding lack of exercise in another. This state of affairs 
cannot be healthful to the nervous system, for the unused parts 
must tend to atrophy, while those constantly exercised are 
liable to feel the bad effects of over-exertion. From this point 
of view^, these figures given by Browne are worthy of remem- 
brance. He found that a sawyer of vegetable ivory buttons 
could at the age of forty produce one hundred gross a day ; 
at forty-five, eighty gross; at fifty-five, sixty gross; at sixty- 
five, forty gross. 

Contrast with this the statements of Galton and Venn, which 
certainly tend to show that general exercise of the brain is a 
concomitant of prolonged growth : " Although it is pretty well 
ascertained that in the masses &T the population the brain 
ceases to grow after the age of nineteen, or even earlier, it is 
by no means so with ~ university students." 1 "Comparing the 
' head volumes ' of the students, two facts claim notice, viz., 
first, that the heads of the high-honour men are distinctively 
larger than those of the pass men ; and, second, that the heads 
of all alike continue to grow for some years after the age of 
nineteen." 2 These statements were made after careful meas- 
urements of the heads of Cambridge students at various times 
during the undergraduate period. We have already seen that 
the brains of the less favoured population attain their maxi- 
mum weight by the age of fifteen. 

We must, however, beware against thinking that proper ex- 
ercise can prolong brain growth indefinitely. It is well here 
to repeat our former statement that it is highly probable that 
1 Sir Francis Galton, Nature, Vol. 41, p. 454. 2 Venn, Nature, March, 1890. 



102 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

one seldom gets an absolutely new idea into his head after he 
is thirty. After that period he may erect a wonderful structure 
of ideas upon foundations already laid, but that is all. If any 
subsequent structure is to be reared, an ample foundation to 
support it must be laid before that time. If these statements 
are true, they should be capable of verification from the lives 
of the world's great men. An examination of them will show 
the correctness or the falsity of this position. Such investiga- 
tions are worthy our attention because the world is yet alto- 
gether too much of the opinion that there is time enough to 
begin to do a thing. The writer has heard many a person 
lament because the absolute necessity of early training and of 
an early start on the general lines of his life's work was not 
impressed on him. Many a person has drifted along, feeling 
that there would be time enough by-and-by. There is one 
motto which a study of the nervous system specially impresses 
on us : " By the streets of By-and-By, one arrives at the house 
of Never." 

Alexander the Great had conquered Greece at twenty- one, 
Persia at twenty-five. He was dead at thirty-three. Sulla is 
on record as having detected the capacity of Julius Caesar at 
the age of seventeen. When twenty-nine, Hannibal crossed 
the Alps with his victorious army, and two years later won the 
greatest victory of his life. The death of his father gave 
William the Conqueror the dukedom of Normandy at the age 
of ten. During his teens he fought and reduced to submission 
the rebellious Norman barons and made his power almost ab- 
solute, or he could never have stood on the victorious field of 
Hastings at the late age of forty-one and thereby changed the 
history of the world. Speaking of the latter part of his life, 
Freeman says : '''Nearly the whole of William's few remaining 
years were spent in a struggle, which in earlier times he would 



AGE AND TRAINING 103 

surely have ended in a day." Before he was thirty, Oliver 
Cromwell was a member of the parliament which passed the 
famous Petition of Right. Environment gave him no chance 
to be a leader on the battlefield until he was in his forties, but 
he had already had experience in directing men. We have 
already seen that even in college he was noted for the motor 
development which indicated the man of action. Marlborough 
is often cited as a man who did not develop until late in life, 
but it is forgotten that at the age of seventeen he was an ensign 
in the foot guards, and that at thirty-two he had distinguished 
himself in the war in Flanders. Napoleon was master of Italy 
at twenty-five, the arbiter of Europe at thirty-five. When forty- 
six, his star sank behind the smoke of Waterloo. Military 
critics have said that the Napoleon of thirty-five could have 
won that battle easily. Wellington was an ensign at eighteen, 
a major at twenty-four, a distinguished colonel at twenty-five. 
Martin Luther when thirty-four protested against the sale of 
indulgences. Had he been older, he might have hesitated for 
fear of the consequences. Henry VIII. was in his thirties 
when he took a momentous step wrrich changed the history of 
England. 

Before Shakspere was thirty-five he had produced some of 
his immortal plays. He probably never wrote a line of a play 
after passing the fourth decade of his life. At fifty-two the 
master singer of all time was dead. Strange to say, Milton 
has been claimed as an exception to the rule of early develop- 
ment in the role of poet. The facts show exactly the opposite 
conclusion. When twenty-one he wrote the Hymn on the 
Nativity. Some eminent critics consider Comus the finest 
thing he ever did. He produced this when twenty-six. Al- 
most all critics agree in calling Lycidas the high-water mark 
of English lyrical poetry, and this was written at twenty-nine. 



104 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

It is true that he was nearly sixty when he finished the 
Paradise Lost, but we do not claim that a man cannot do 
anything great at that time, but simply that the necessary 
foundation for that greatness must have been laid by a proper 
youthful development of the central nervous system. Bunyan 
had begun the greatest allegory in the world in the early part 
of his thirties, but he had passed through the experience of 
the immortal Pilgrim some time before. Byron and Burns 
were dead at thirty-seven; Marlowe and Keats, before they 
were thirty ; and Shelley, before he was thirty-one. Coleridge, 
in the opinion of many, wrote the finest thing he ever produced, 
The Ancient Marine?-, at twenty-five. Before Scott was in 
his teens, he was training himself for his future work by seeing 
how well he could tell romances to the High School boys at 
Edinburgh. Berkeley had thought out his ideal philosophy 
at the age of eighteen, although his work, I'/ie New Theory 
of Vision, was not published until he was twenty-four. This 
has been called " the most epoch-making work in the history 
of psychology." Another famous philosophical work, which 
roused Kant from his dojmatic slumber, Hume's Treatise of 
Human Nature, was published when he was twenty-seven. 
At the age of twenty-five, Newton had outlined the most of 
his famous discoveries. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe was in 
her thirties when she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, 
Auber, Weber, and Cherubini had produced original musical 
compositions before the age of thirteen. Professor Sully 1 has 
made a study of certain classes of eminent men with reference 
to their early development. He says : " What proportion of 
eminent musicians showed marked taste and ability as children ? 
In order to answer this question I have gone through forty 

1 Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 29. 



AGE AND TRAINING 105 

names. Of these I find that thirty-eight displayed a decided 
bent to the art before the age of twenty." When we realize 
that the auditory brain cells demanded early cultivation while 
still plastic, and that the motor connection between the cells 
preserving the modification caused by the sounds and the 
muscles employed in playing the notes, must have been devel- 
oped early, the large percentage of early development among 
musicians need cause no surprise. 

In the case of artists and sculptors, Sully says : " I have 
taken fifty- eight artists, consisting of painters, sculptors, and 
architects, of whose early years I have been able to obtain any 
information. Of these I find that forty- two — that is to say, 
about three out of every four — are credited with having shown 
a decided skill before the age of fifteen. . . . Michael Angelo 
produced great works by nineteen. Raphael painted fine 
pictures at twenty-one. Titian became a distinguished painter 
at about twenty. . . . Holbein is known to have painted good 
works at the age of fifteen, and at nineteen produced fine ex- 
amples of finished portraits. Van Dyck, too, painted exquisite 
portraits at twenty-one. Rubens had made his mark by excel- 
lent work at twenty-three. Rembrandt was famous at twenty- 
four. ... I cannot find an instance of artistic fame having 
been reached after the age of forty." 

In the case of poets, Sully says : " Among German poets, 
Goethe, the greatest, is also the most precocious. He is said 
to have composed dialogues between six and eight. His first 
poems date from the sixteenth year, and by twenty-two he 
sounded in his Gotz von Berlichingen the new national note 
in German drama. Among French poets, Alfred de Musset, 
who had excited the envy of his comrades at school by his 
quickness, composed poems at fourteen. Perhaps, however, 
the most valuable example among French poets is Victor 



106 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

Hugo, who was called an ' enfant sublime/ began as a school- 
boy to write poems, both translations and original composi- 
tions, by sixteen produced original works of lasting value, and 
by twenty-five was the acknowledged leader of the Romantic 
movement. . . . 

" Poets rank high, too, in the matter of early production. 
After going through a series of sixty names, I find that thirty- 
eight, or very nearly two-thirds, wrote before twenty. Of the 
others, seventeen began to write before thirty. Thus only five, 
that is to say, one out of every twelve, took to poetic composi- 
tion after thirty." Turning to writers of fiction, he says: 
" Taking twenty-eight novelists, I find that in twenty-one cases, 
that is, in three cases out of four — there is evidence of imagina- 
tive power showing itself before twenty." 

In the case of men of science, early development is also 
marked. He says on this point : " I find after going through a 
list of thirty-six, that twenty-seven, or three-fourths, have given 
distinct evidence of a bent to science before twenty. . . . 
Out of a list of thirty- one, seven certainly wrote memoirs or 
other works under twenty ; fifteen gave out their first known 
production between twenty and twenty-five; three began to 
write between twenty-five and thirty ; leaving six who, so far 
as I can judge, entered on the productive stage after thirty. 

" In science, as in the more serious department of letters, 
fame is sometimes reached suddenly by the production of a 
great work, the fruit of many years of study. Harvey's publi- 
cation of his great discovery at the age of fifty is a case in 
point. It is to be remembered, however, that Harvey had 
expounded his theory in lectures some twelve years before this 
date. And the same kind of remark applies to Darwin and 
others who first gave to the world epoch-making truths at a 
somewhat advanced age; we commonly find that the actual 



AGE AND TRAINING loy 

discovery dates from a much earlier period, the promulgation 
of it being deferred till it was ready to be presented in a defi- 
nite and verified form." 

We can hear some objector saying, "These conclusions are 
drawn from an examination of geniuses only. Ninety-nine per 
cent of humanity develop later." If there were any consolation 
in such an argument as this, the most of us would gladly wel- 
come it, but alas ! there is less than none. We have already 
seen that it is altogether probable that the brains of geniuses, 
and of all who early strengthen their nerve cells by the proper 
exercise, remain plastic longer than the average. If there is 
any one who could afford to defer early training, it is a genius, 
since his period of plasticity is longer. The person of ordinary 
ability needs to begin earlier to train his nervous system, while 
the brief morning of plasticity lasts. 

We may end the discussion of this very important subject 
with the following from Dr. Carpenter: "The modifiability 
which is characteristic of the nervous organism as a whole 
during its earliest stages, continues to show itself in each indi- 
vidual-organ until its evolution is complete. Thus it is a mat- 
ter of universal experience that every kind of training for 
special aptitudes is both far more effective, and leaves a far 
more permanent impress, when exerted on the growing organ- 
ism, than when brought to bear on the adult. The effect of 
such training is shown in the tendency of the organ to ' grow 
to ' the mode in which it is habitually exercised, as is evidenced 
by the increased size and power of particular sets of muscles, 
and the extraordinary flexibility of joints, which are acquired 
by such as have been early exercised in gymnastic perform- 
ances. . . . 

" On the other hand, from the time that the brain has at- 
tained its full maturity, the acquirement of new modes of action, 



108 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

and the discontinuance of those which have become habitual, 
are alike difficult. Both the intellectual and the moral charac- 
ter have become in great degree fixed ; so that, although new 
impressions are being constantly received, they have much less 
power in directing the course of psychical action than they had 
at an earlier period, — that course being henceforth rather de- 
termined by the established uniformities, and by the volitional 
power of selective attention. The readiness with which new 
knowledge is now acquired, depends much more upon the 
degree with which it ' fits in ' with previous habits of thought." 1 

l Carpenter's Mental Physiology, Chap. VIII. 



CHAPTER VII 

General Sensory Training, with an Examination 
of the Character of the Sensory Images em- 
ployed by Shakspere and Milton. 

The necessity is apparent for developing by the proper 
exercise the various muscles of the body. The muscles of the 
chest, back, loins, limbs, all need fitting exercise in youth. 
Many a child has not deepened a narrow chest because of the 
lack of the proper exercise during the growing time. In the 
same way many persons have become narrow brained ; that is, 
they have failed to develop their potential brain capacities. 

The case of Laura Bridgman shows that the cortex of the 
brain demands for its development proper sensory exercise. 
Because of her early blindness the visual centre in her occipital 
lobes never fully developed. The cortex was thin and the cells 
undeveloped. If the proper sensory stimulus does not flow 
into the brain at the fitting time, we can hardly escape con- 
cluding that the brain will never reach its full development and 
that the unfortunate possessor will be handicapped for life. 
If these undeveloped spots are allowed to pass the plastic 
stage, they will remain permanently in that condition. 

All the higher structures of knowledge are built upon this 
sensory development. If the foundation is hazy and ill-defined, 
we must remember that the structure reared upon it can be no 
firmer than its support. All thought, all imagination, at the 
last analysis rest upon this sensory substrate. 

109 



110 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

In order that sensory brain tracts may be properly developed, 
there are two indispensable conditions, — the training must be 
early, and of the right kind. If young birds are brought up 
where they cannot hear the song of their own species, they will 
never at a later time be able to sing the pure song of their kind. 

Modern man has in many cases so diminished his sensory 
training that he is only a pitiful fraction of a man. With 
many, the visual centre alone receives anything like adequate 
exercise. All the other senses are neglected. Some few train 
their hearing alone. Almost all agree to neglect smell and 
taste ; while only the blind have their sense of touch prop- 
erly trained. The truth is that man has not a single unneces- 
sary sense, not one that should not be systematically trained. 
We have become accustomed to class people as those whose 
images are chiefly of the visual or the auditory type. In many 
things these two classes of persons are scarcely intelligible to 
each other, because their ideas do not rest on the same sen- 
sory experiences. To the one class, the world is one of sight ; 
to the other, one of sound. 

We agree with Binet * that the normal man is one who can 
form definite images from all the senses, who can recall almost 
equally well the odour, colour, and touch of a rose, the taste 
of whipped custard as well as the sound made in beating it. 
If this is the right view, many are but sawed-off specimens of 
human beings. 

As a preliminary to mapping out the proper sensory training, 
it becomes a matter of importance to know whether the great 
man is one whose distinct images are not fettered to any one 
sense, or whether he is one to whom all the pathways of incom- 
ing sensations are attractive. An examination of the writings 
of the greatest author of all time, as well as of some others who 

1 La Psychologie du Raisonnement. 



GENERAL SENSORY TRAINING III 

are pre-eminent, will be useful in deciding this point ; for we 
are all apt to use those images which strike us most forcibly, in 
preference to others. We should take the most eminent men, 
for we might naturally expect that a commonplace person 
would be but a fraction of a man. If we find that all the 
senses appeal strongly to the master mind, it will also be 
plain that we in order to interpret him must cultivate all our 
senses. Unless there has been community of experience, the 
one cannot interpret the images of the other. We can inter- 
pret only so much as we can assimilate to something in our 
own line of experience. 

Let us first consider the sense of smell, which some edu- 
cators have been thoughtless enough to decry. 

When Shakspere tries to convey an idea of the exquisite 
perfection of certain music, he appeals to the sense of smell : 

" . . .it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing and giving odour." 

When he describes the barge on which the most beautiful 
woman of all time came down the Nile, the sense of smell is 
called on to make the image complete : 

" Purple the sails, and so perfumed that 
. The winds were lovesick with them." 

When the vendor in the Winter's Tale wishes to make his 
wares attractive, he says : 

" Gloves as sweet as damask roses." 

In that strong scene after the fitful fever of ambition had left 
Lady Macbeth, Shakspere shows her conscience at work : 

" Here's the smell of the blood still : 
All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." 



112 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

Perdita for her matchless garland speaks of: 

"... violets dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
Or Cytherea's breath.'" 

The Ghost in Hamlet for a moment relieves the tension of 
the scene, when he says : 

" But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air." 

When a beautiful flower sprang up from the spot where the 
life-blood of Adonis wet the earth, Shakspere says of Venus : 

" She bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell, 
Comparing it to her Adonis' breath." 

In the Twelfth Night, Viola thus voices her well-wishing : 
" Most excellent accomplished lady, the heavens rain odours on you !" 

In Pericles, the characters say of the chest : 

" Soft ! it smells most sweetly in my sense. 
A delicate odour, 
As ever hit my nostril." 

Before that wonderful dirge song in Cymbeline is sung, Shak- 
spere makes a mourner say : 

" With fairest flowers 
While summer lasts and I live here, Fidele, 
I'll sweeten thy sad grave ; thou shalt not lack 
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor 
The azured harebell, like thy veins, no, nor 
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, 
Out-sweetened not thy breath." 



GENERAL SENSORY TRAINING 113 

In a sonnet Shakspere says : 

" The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem 
For that sweet odour which doth in it live. 
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye 
As the perfumed tincture of the roses, 
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly 
When Summer's breath their masked buds discloses ; 
But, for their virtue only is their show, 
They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade, 
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so ; 
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made.'" 

Any student can find in Shakspere's works a throng of im- 
ages which demand a cultivated sense of smell for their inter- 
pretation and full comprehension. Let us now pass to the 
next greatest name in English literature. 

In Milton's Arcades we read : 

" And early, ere the odorous breath of morn 
Awakes the slumbering leaves." 

The Spirit in Comus sings : 

"... there eternal summer dwells 
And west winds with musky wing 
About the cedarn alleys fling 
Nard, and Cassia's balmy smells. 
Iris there with humid bow 
Waters the odorous banks." 

In Lycidas, one of the first lyrical poems of all time, the best 
botanical critics, after much discussion of the following beautiful 
passage, have concluded that the flowers were chosen, not for 
their colours, but for their fragrance : 

" Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, 
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, 
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet, 



114 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

The glowing violet, 

The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine, 

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, 

And every flower that sad embroidery wears ; 

Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, 

And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, 

To strew the laureat hearse where Lycid lies." 

Passages like these, which demand definite odour images to 
interpret them fully, are frequent in the poems which Milton 
wrote before he was blind. If his odour sense had not been cul- 
tivated while he was still young, we may be sure that his older 
and less plastic nerve cells would not have taken on the re- 
quired modification after he was blind. 

In the Paradise Lost, odour images are specially pronounced : 

"... Now gentle gales, 
Fanning their odorifrous wings, dispense 
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole 
Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail 
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past 
Mozambique, off at sea north-east winds blow 
Sabean odours from the spicy shore 
Of Araby the Blest ; with such delay 
Well pleased, they slack their course, and many a league 
Cheer'd with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles." 

The careful student of the fourth and the fifth books of the 
Paradise Lost can hardly fail to be impressed with the fact 
that odours enter to a remarkable degree into that wonderful 
picture of Eden : 

"... airs, vernal airs 
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune 



Groves whose rich trees wept od'rous gums and balm." 



GENERAL SENSORY TRAINING 115 

Eve thus describes Eden without the companionship of 
Adam : 

"... fragrant the fertile earth 
After soft showers ; and sweet the coming on 
Of grateful ev'ning mild ; then silent Night, 
With this her solemn bird, and this fair Moon, 
And these the gems of Heav'n, her starry train ; 
But neither breath of Morn, when she ascends 
With charm of earliest birds ; nor rising Sun 
* On this delightful land ; nor herb, fruit, flower, 
Glis'tring with dew ; nor fragrance after showers ; 
Nor grateful ev'ning mild ; nor silent Night 
With this her solemn bird, nor walk by Moon, 
Or glitt'ring starlight, without thee is sweet." 
In the noble passage just quoted, with its wealth of olfactory, 
tactile, visual, auditory, and motor images, nothing is more 
pronounced than the fragrance which loads the air of Eden. 
The same is true of the following passage : 

" Thus talking hand in hand, alone they pass'd 
On to their blissful bow'r ; it was a place 
Chosen by the Sov'reign Planter, when he framed 
All things to Man's delightful use. The roof 
Of thickest covert was inwoven shade, 
Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew 
Of firm and fragrant leaf : on either side 
Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub 
Fenced up the verdant wall . . . 
. . . Here in close recess, 

With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs, 
Espoused Eve deck'd first her nuptial bed." 

Eve says of her ominous dream of the apple : 
"... The pleasant sav'ry smell 
So quicken'd appetite, that I, methought, 
Could not but taste." 



Il6 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

Adam withdraws her attention from this unpleasant dream 
by saying : 

"... let us to our fresh employments rise 
Among the groves, the fountains, and the flowers 
That open now their choicest bosom'd smells." 

" . . . So to the sylvan lodge 
They come, that like Pomona's arbour smiled 
With flow'rets deck'd and fragrant smells." 

A beautiful line in Gray's Elegy will receive scant interpre- 
tation from those whose sense of smell has not been developed 
by experience such as he suggests : 

"The breezy call of incense-breathing morn. 1 ' 

That child is fortunate who can definitely interpret this 
passage from Keats : 

"... He arose 
Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing star 
Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose ; 
Into her dream he melted, as the rose 
Blendeth its odour with the violet, — 
Solution sweet. 11 

We have quoted enough to show that, no matter what com- 
monplace minds may think to the contrary, Shakspere and 
Milton thought odour images worthy to be used in their most 
noble and beautiful passages. Aside from the necessity of 
having a cultivated olfactory brain tract in order to assimilate 
the works of the greatest writers, it must be further remembered 
that things in nature have odour qualities. Exact information 
demands complete knowledge of a thing. All the senses must 
hand in their report before we can be said to know a thing. 

The sense of taste is almost always combined with odour and 
touch. We know that much of the pleasure from eating 



GENERAL SENSORY TRAINING 117 

jellies is due to tactile sensations in the tongue. The Shah of 
Persia reproached Europeans for the use of knives and forks, 
saying that the sense of taste began in the finger tips. This 
is to a certain extent true, and it had not escaped the pene- 
trating mind of Shakspere. He makes one of his characters 
say: 

" Man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his 
heart to report, what my dream was." 

Shakspere also has one of his characters say : 

"Mine eyes smell onions, I shall weep anon." 

The fact that when the nose is held, many articles of food 
are well-nigh tasteless, shows that when we cultivate taste, we 
are really developing three senses at once. The images de- 
rived from the isolated sense of taste are, therefore, naturally 
not very numerous ; yet every time the terms "sweet," "sour," 
or "bitter" are employed, their meaning finds its sole founda- 
tion in the experiences of the gustatory sense. 

Ophelia in a touching passage appeals to the senses of both 
taste and sound to make her meaning clear : 

" And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, 
That sucked the honey of his music vows, 
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh." 

When Cleopatra was beginning to sleep the sleep of death, 
she whispered : 

" As sweet as balm, as soft as air," 

and seeming thus to taste, as well as touch, the Lethean cup, 
she fell asleep. 



Il8 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

Milton gives the sense of taste full prominence in his Eden : 

"... to their supper-fruits they fell, 
Nectarine fruits which the compliant boughs 
Yielded them, side-long as they sat recline 
On the soft downy bank damask'd with flow'rs. 
The savoury pulp they chew, and in the rind 
Still as they thirsted scoop the brimming stream." 

" Others whose fruit burnished with golden rind 
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true, 
If true, here only, and of delicious taste. 1 ' 

" And Eve within, due at her hour prepared 
For dinner sav'ry fruits, of taste to please 
True appetite, and not disrelish thirst 
Of nect'rous draughts between, from milky stream, 
Berry or grape." 

" She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent 
What choice to choose for delicacy best, 
What order, so contrived as not to mix 
Tastes not well joined, inelegant, but bring 
Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change." 

When Raphael visits the spotless pair in Eden, Eve prepares 
some of the delights of taste : 

"... for drink, the grape 
She crushes, inoffensive must, and meaths 
From many a berry, and from sweet kernels press'd 
She tempers dulcet creams." 

When the sensory centre for taste has been well developed 
in the brain, there is an added pleasure in living. Life is not 
so rich in pleasures that one can be needlessly lopped off. 
The same viands, if enjoyed, are better digested than if they 
are not. The nerve pleasure coming from the proper exercise 



GENERAL SENSORY TRAINING 119 

of physical taste is no more to be despised than any other 
pleasure which has its foundation in nervous action. When 
we grow older and the nerves of taste have become blunted, 
we may still have genuine enjoyment in recalling images of 
youthful gustatory pleasure in eating strawberries, peaches, or 
the viands prepared by maternal hands. Besides, taste fur- 
nishes a quality essential to the proper knowledge of many 
things. What sort of an object would a strawberry be, if it 
had never been tasted ? That childhood must be very barren 
which furnishes no gustatory images for age to wonder at, and 
to enjoy in recalling. If we can remember some youthful 
experiences with honey, we shall certainly the better enjoy and 
understand these lines from Milton, where he addresses the 
flowers : 

" Throw hither all your quaint enameird eyes, 
That on the green turf suck the honied showers." 

Memories of childhood may cause the face of the wearied 
city dweller to lighten up, as he reads in the Tempest: 
u Where the bee sucks, there suck I." 

Fortunately, the sense of touch must be trained to a certain 
extent in order that we may use our eyes intelligently. We 
cannot say that a chestnut burr looks rough until we have felt 
it in connection with looking at it. Slowly, through many trials, 
we come to use the lights and shades and varying magnitudes 
as signs for ocular judgments, which have heretofore in similar 
cases been verified by an appeal to touch and muscular sensa- 
tions. Notwithstanding this, the sense of touch of many per- 
sons is very imperfectly trained. It is by no means certain 
that it might not be better for most children to be blind a year 
or two early in life, so that more attention might be paid to 
training the sense of touch. 



120 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

To show that Shakspere must have been capable of forming 
definite tactile images, we quote a few passages which can re- 
ceive their complete interpretation only in the light of tactile 
experience : 

" There's a divinity that shapes our ends 
Rough hew them how we will." 

" . . . the female ivy so 
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm." 

The rough hewing and the uneven bark on a tree must either 
be directly ascertained by touch or inferred from past tactile 
sensations. 

When Charmion addressed the eyes of the dying Cleopatra : 

"... Downy windows close," 

she used an image from one of the most pleasing of tactile sen- 
sations, that of down. 

"... I take thy hand, this hand, 
As soft as doves' down and as white as it." 

" . . . O, that her hand, 
In whose comparison all whites are ink, 
Writing their own reproach, to whose soft seizure 
The cygnet's down is harsh, and spirit of sense 
Hard as the palm of ploughman." 

" Love's feeling is more soft and sensible 
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails." 

Macbeth says to the dagger : 

"... Come, let me clutch thee. 
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. 
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible 
To feeling as to sight ? or art thou but 
A dagger of the mind, a false creation? " 

" , , . the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense." 



GENERAL SENSORY TRAINING 121 

" Bow, stubborn knees : and, heart with strings of steel, 
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe ! " 

"... Weariness 
Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth 
Finds the down pillow hard." 

"... the silken tackle 
Swells with the touches of those flower-like hands." 

Ophelia, in replying to the good advice of Laertes, uses 
images which appeal most strongly to the sense of touch : 

"... But good my brother, 
Do not as some ungracious pastors do, 
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, 
Whilst like a pufPd and reckless libertine 
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads." 

The blinded Gloucester says of his son : 

" Might I but live to see thee in my touch, 
Fd say I had eyes again." 

When Shakspere speaks of reclining on beds of lilies in 
Elysium, the sense of touch is even more strongly appealed to 
than the sense of odour. 

In Milton's Comus the river goddess says : 
" Thus I set my printless feet 
O'er the cowslip's velvet head, 
That bends not as I tread." 

Now, the head of a cowslip cannot have "velvet " applied to 
it except in terms of touch. 
Milton also speaks of 

" Beds of hyacinths and roses, 
Where young Adonis oft reposes, 
Waxing well of his deep wound, 
In slumber soft." 



122 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

Adam and Eve recline 

" On the soft downy bank, damask'd with flowVs." 

Under what are popularly termed sensations of touch, are 
included muscular, pressure, and temperature sensations. 
Shakspere appeals to all these, and, in order to follow him, we 
must be able to recall definite images based on our own experi- 
ence. Macbeth awakens such images in our minds, when he 
says : 

" Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
And then is heard no more/ 7 

It is well to notice that if we form definite images of Ham- 
let's behaviour with Ophelia, as we read these lines, we must 
appeal to former muscular sensations : 

" At last, a little shaking of mine arm 
And thrice his head thus waving up and down, 
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound 
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk 
And end his being.'" 

Shakspere also frequently appeals to the temperature sense, 
which experiment has shown to depend on nerves other than 
those of touch. The following passages appeal to the tempera- 
ture sense : 

" Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, 

That dost not bite so nigh 

As benefits forgot ; 

Though thou the waters warp, 

Thy sting is not so sharp 

As friend remembered not." 

" A milk-sop, one that never in his life 
Felt so much cold as over shoes in snow." 



GENERAL SENSORY TRAINING 123 

" My hour is almost come 
When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames 
Must render up myself. 11 

" O, who can hold a fire in his hand 
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? 
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite 
By bare imagination of a feast ? 
Or wallow naked in December snow 
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat ? " 

Auditory images are employed by Shakspere frequently to 
give warmth and vigour to his scenes. 
In the Winter's Tale, Autolycus sings : 

" The lark, that tirra-lirra chants, — 
With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay, 
Are summer songs for me and my aunts, 
While we lie tumbling in the hay. 11 

Some of the most exquisite passages in the Merchant of 
Venice contain auditory images : 

" Let music sound while he doth make his choice ; 
Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end, 
Fading in music. 11 

"How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! 
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music 
Creep in our ears : soft stillness and the night 
Become the touches of sweet harmony. 11 

" The man that hath no music in himself, 
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, 
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. " 



124 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

The Midsummer Nighfs Dream brings in the sounds of the 
fields : 

"... Your tongue's sweet air 
More tunable than lark to shepherd's ear 
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear." 

When Orlando wishes to move some strangers with pity over 
his condition, the first concrete image that he employs is an 
auditory one : 

" If ever you have look'd on better days, 
If ever been where bells have knoll'd to church." 

Some of the sweetest songs in his plays are resonant with 
auditory images : 

" Under the greenwood tree 
Who loves to lie with me, 
And tune his merry note 
Unto the sweet bird's throat." 

" When shepherds pipe on oaten straws 
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks." 

When Milton in his youth was moving among rare country 
scenes at Horton, his world was as much auditory as visual. 
These auditory images appear in his poetry : 

" Oft listening how the hounds and horn 
Cheerily rouse the slumbering Morn 
From the side of some hoar hill, 
Through the high wood echoing shrill. 

" While the ploughman near at hand 
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land 
And the milkmaid singeth blithe 
And the mower whets his scythe. 



GENERAL SENSORY TRAINING 125 

" While the bee with honied thigh 
That at her flowery work doth sing, 
And the waters murmuring, 
With such consort as they keep, 
Entice the dewy-feather'd sleep." 

His Hymn on the Nativity abounds in auditory images. In 
his Comus one of the characters says : 

"... might we but hear 
The folded flocks penn'd in their wattled cotes, 
Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, 
Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock 
Count the night watches to his feathery dames. 



At last a soft and solemn breathing sound 

Rose like a steam of rich distilPd perfumes, 

And stole upon the air. . . 

... I was all ear 

And took in strains that might create a soul 

Under the ribs of Death." 



Though the Paradise Lost has many auditory images, we 
shall not quote from it because Milton was blind when he 
wrote it. Hence, it might be claimed that he was then driven 
to auditory images, but it must not be forgotten that he could 
only be driven to use his youthful acquisitions. All the above 
quotations embodying auditory images are taken from his 
writings before he was thirty. 

Wordsworth gives us perhaps as pure an auditory image as is 
to be met with in literature : 

" O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird 
Or but a wandering voice? " 



126 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

It is scarcely necessary to show that the greatest writers 
employ visual images. The eye is frequently the only sense 
organ that receives anything like adequate cultivation. The 
one who can draw his images from this sense alone, resembles 
a paralytic, who has lost control over all his limbs but one. 
Since there are a few great persons whose visual images are 
deficient, and who employ chiefly auditory images, we shall 
quote a few lines from Shakspere and Milton to show that they 
are not of this type. 

Visual images are necessary to interpret Shakspere, when 
he speaks of the liveries of autumn, the freckles of the cowslip, 
the bolted snow, the greenwood tree, the roses fading in 
Hermia's cheeks, the 

"... little western flower, 
Before milk white, now purple with love's wound." 

The colours mentioned in the following amusing passage 
from A Midsummer Night's Dream can be interpreted in 
terms of vision alone : 

" Asleep, my love ? 

What, dead, my dove? 
O Pyramus, arise! 

Speak, speak. Quite dumb? 

Dead, dead? A tomb 
Must cover thy sweet eyes. 

These lily lips, 

This cherry nose, 
These yellow cpwslip cheeks, 

Are gone, are gone : 

Lovers, make moan, 
His eyes were green as leeks. 

O Sisters Three, 

Come, come to me, 
With hands as pale as milk ; 



GENERAL SENSORY TRAINING 1 27 

Lay them in gore 
Since you have shore 
With shears his thread of silk." 

The same drama teems with visual images, which a person 
who has trained his senses sufficiently well on the proper natural 
objects, could form distinctly enough for a picture to be painted 
from them : 

" The cowslips tall her pensioners be ; 

In their gold coats spots you see, — 

These be rubies, fairy favours, 

In those freckles live their savours. 

I must go seek some dewdrops here, 

And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.'" 

We shall here note only a few of the visual images which 
Milton employed after he was blind : 

" Ye Mists and Exhalations that now rise 
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray 
Till the Sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold." 
******** 

" Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round 
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold 
And colours dipt in Heav'n." 

" Innumerable as the stars of night, 
Or stars of morning, dewdrops, which the Sun 
Impearls on ev'ry leaf and evVy flow'r." 

" Now Morn her rosy steps in th' eastern clime 
Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearl." 

" A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold, 
And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear 
Seen in the galaxy, that milky way, 
Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest 
Powder'd with stars." 



128 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

Shakspere in his greatest character speaks contemptuously 
of those who rely on only one sense : 

" Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, 
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, 
Or but a sickly part of one true sense 
Could not so mope." 

Even Christopher Sly the tinker has sense enough to say, 
on awaking and finding himself in a changed place : 

"... I see, I hear, I speak ; 
I smell sweet savours and I feel soft things." 

Again and again does Shakspere invest every sense with the 
royal purple. Now one and now the other seems his favourite 
child. Of him it may be said in the language of one of his 
characters : 

"... The five best senses 
Acknowledge thee their patron ; and come freely 
To gratulate thy plenteous bosom : th' ear, 
Taste, touch, and smell, pleased from thy table rise ; 
They only now come but to feast thine eyes." 

We have already quoted enough to show that the greatest 
writers of all time had definite images from every sense. They 
despised none, neither taste nor smell. Even Shakspere did 
not shrink from making the beautiful princess Perdita 

" The queen of curds and cream." 

We intended in this chapter to show that the world appealed 
to all the senses, that in order to know it definitely and to 
enjoy it fully, we could not afford to overlook the training of 
any sense. We also started with the supposition that the most 
perfect specimen of man would have a marked preference for 



GENERAL SENSORY TRAINING 129 

neither visual nor auditory images, but all the avenues of sense 
would be attractive to him ; that to call a man a visualist or an 
auditaire is to accuse him of being one-sided. An examina- 
tion of Shakspere's and of Milton's writings confirms this view. 
When we keep our children confined with books away from 
the odour of the wild flowers, the touch of the velvet grass, 
the taste of the wild berry, the song of the birds, or the sight 
of the daisy, we may know that this almost exclusively bookish 
training would have silenced the master singer of all time. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Special Sensory Training 

The greatest mistake made in education consists in shutting 
children away from nature, and in trying to teach them almost 
entirely from books. In the majority of cases, children at the 
age of six or eight still go to school to study books. When we 
remember that the different sensory centres in the brain remain 
plastic but a comparatively short time, we can see how much 
of the education of the day actually causes the sensory cells to 
atrophy. Since the highest forms of knowledge rest on a sen- 
sory foundation and can never be any firmer than that founda- 
tion, we can realize that even the metaphysician is not in a 
position to decry sense training. 

Some have said that a child ought, as a matter of course, to 
be put to studying books on entering school, since enough time 
has already been given for developing the senses. The kinder- 
garten has undoubtedly taken an important step in the direc- 
tion of properly training the senses, but we must not forget that 
only one step has been taken. The first letter in the alphabet 
of sense training has been taught by the kindergarten, and in 
many cases well taught. The very damaging impression has 
become common with many teachers that the child should 
have graduated in sense training on leaving the kindergarten. 
Sense training ought to be continuous and methodical until at 
least the age of twenty. In those ages when there were few 
books, the ages when Chaucer, Dante, and Shakspere lived, 
the training of the senses continued the entire life. Instead 

130 



SPECIAL SENSORY TRAINING 



131 



of reading about a thing, men studied it with their own 
senses. 

In Boston and Kansas City, questions have been given to 
children on entering school, to determine the extent and accu- 
racy of their ideas. Those who think a child's senses are then 
sufficiently well-cultivated for him to study thereafter mostly 



Name of Object 
or Conception. 



Beehive 

Crow 

Ant 

Squirrel 

Robin 

Sheep 

Bee 

Frog 

Pig 

Chicken 

Worm 

Butterfly .... 

Hen 

Cow 

Growing wheat . . 
Elm tree .... 

Oak 

Pine 

Maple 

Growing moss . . 
Growing strawberries 
Dew 



Per Cent of Children Ignorant 
of IT. 



In Boston. 



80.0 
77.0 
66.5 
63.0 
60.5 
54.0 
52.0 
50.0 

47-5 
35-5 
22.0 
20.5 
19.0 
18.5 

92.5 
91.5 
87.0 
87.0 
83.0 
81.5 

78.5 
78.0 



In Kansas City. 



White. 



Colored. 



594 


66.0 


47-3 


59.0 


21.5 


19. 1 


15.0 


4.2 


30.6 


10.2 


3-5 


0.0 


7.27 


4.2 


2.7 


0.0 


i-7 


0.0 


0.5 


0.0 


0.5 


0.0 


0.5 


0.0 


0.1 


0.0 


5.2 


0.0 


234 


66.0 


52.4 


89.8 


66.2 


58.6 


65.6 


87.2 


31.2 


80.8 


30-7 


42.5 


26.5 


1.1 


39-i 


70.2 



132 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

from the printed page, must receive something of a shock on 
reading the figures given above. It should be noted that the 
percentages indicate, not the number possessing the concept, 
but those ignorant of it. The majority of the children were 
about six years old. 

This report 1 shows that seventy-eight per cent of Boston 
children would not know what the sparkling dew was. In 
after years these children could scarcely be expected to attach 
much meaning to Shakspere, when his fairy spoke of hanging 
a pearl in every cowslip's ear. 

The very first step towards cultivating a child's senses con- 
sists in putting him in as favourable an environment as possible. 
It is nonsense to expect to have well-cultivated senses in chil- 
dren who live in crowded tenements. Dr. Hall says : " The 
best preparation parents can give their children for good school 
training is to make them acquainted with natural objects, 
especially with the sights and sounds of the country. . . . 

" As our methods of teaching grow natural, we realize that 
city life is unnatural, and that those who grow up without 
knowing the country are defrauded of that without which 
childhood can never be complete or normal. On the whole, 
the material of the city is no doubt inferior in pedagogic value 
to country experience. A few days in the country at this age 
has raised the level of many a city child's intelligence more 
than a term or two of school training could do without it. . . . 

" On the whole, however, additional force seems thus given 
to the argument for excursions by rail or otherwise, regularly 
provided for the poorer children, who are causing the race to 
degenerate in the great centres of population, unfavourable 
enough for those with good homes or even for adults." 2 

i By G. S. Hall and J. M. Greenwood. 

2 G. Stanley Hall's The Contents of Children's Minds, pp. 26, 28, 30. 



SPECIAL SENSORY TRAINING I 33 

But it is not enough for the children to be taken into the 
country. As Whittier says, the parent or the teacher must 
himself first know : 

" Knowledge never learned of schools, 
Of the wild bee's morning chase, 
Of the wild flower's time and place, 
Flight of fowl and habitude 
Of the tenants of the wood ; 
How the tortoise bears his shell, 
How the woodchuck digs his cell 
And the groundmole sinks his well ; 
How the oriole's nest is hung ; 
Where the whitest lilies blow, 
Where the freshest berries grow, 
Where the ground-nut trails its vine, 
Where the wood grape's clusters shine ; 
Of the black wasp's cunning way, 
Mason of his walls of clay, 
And the architectural plans 
Of gray hornet artisans ! " 

If the child's knowledge reaches to a solid foundation of 
sense training like this, the floods of time will beat in vain 
upon that knowledge. Other things may pass away, but that 
remains while the brain lasts. 

Teachers of English literature are complaining that pupils 
cannot understand or appreciate some of the most beautiful, 
as well as the most simple, things because of the lack of sense 
training. For instance, from Gray's Elegy : 

" The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, 

The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed, 
The cock's shrill clarion or the echoing horn, 
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed." 



134 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

In order to interpret this simple stanza, there must be 
formed an olfactory image of the fragrance of a rural morning ; 
auditory images of the twittering of the swallow, the crowing of 
the rooster, the melodious echoes of a horn ; visual images of 
the swallow, the straw-built shed, the rooster, and the horn. 
Here are eight special sense images demanded in order that 
we may interpret what would be otherwise meaningless marks 
on paper. Here is also a good chance for the reader to test 
the accuracy and definiteness of his early sense impressions. 
He, and only he, can tell whether they are definite or hazy. 
These eight objects are probably as good to train the senses 
with as any other eight that could be named. Every poetical 
quotation in the preceding chapter presents sense objects which 
indicate the direction for special training. Let these passages 
be read with the express purpose of forming the images therein 
suggested. If no definite images are forthcoming to interpret 
certain objects, let the senses search them out and receive 
training therefrom. 

If the teacher of literature complains of the inability of pupils 
to interpret the simple sensory images of the poets, what shall 
the scientist say? How can his pupils have anything but a 
hazy foundation for their unsafe generalizations? A thing is a 
compound of the qualities furnished by all the senses. If any 
special sense fails to do its duty because of lack of training, 
knowledge must to that extent be imperfect. The time will 
come when it will seem as stupid, nay, as criminal, to neglect 
the proper training of all a child's senses as to fail to teach him 
to read. 

To indicate how the different sensory brain tracts are to be 
trained is an extremely simple thing. Suppose some one were 
to ask, " How can I modify the surface of a photographic plate 
by means of a pine tree?" There can be but one reply, 



SPECIAL SENSORY TRAINING 1 35 

"Take the properly prepared camera where there is a pine 
tree, and raise the slide." A picture of the tree will then 
develop on the plate. In the case of senses, we have im- 
pressible brain cells in place of the plate. It is, however, 
necessary to go where the object can affect the senses. We 
must go where we can see the pine tree, hear the wind sighing 
through its branches, touch its rough bark, the exuding pitch, 
or the needle-like leaves, and catch whiffs of the balsamic 
odour. 

The first step in training the sensory centres is, therefore, 
seen to consist in bringing them where stimuli from the appro- 
priate natural objects can act on them. The stimuli from these 
various objects will be transmitted by the proper sensory nerves 
to certain parts of the brain. The nerve cells will retain after 
a fashion of their own the modifications due to these stimuli, 
just as the photographic plate preserves the changes made by 
light. Suppose a modification corresponding to the odour of 
the honeysuckle is desired. The olfactory nerves must be 
brought where the fragrance can impress them and transmit its 
stimulation to those nerve cells in the front part of the sub- 
temporal region. The mere play of this stimulus upon those 
cells will tend to direct there an increased blood supply. Bet- 
ter nutrition will follow as a consequence of this, as well as all 
the other advantages which come with the proper exercise. 
If the song of the robin or the bluebird is desired to be known, 
we must simply go where it can be heard. No course of ab- 
stract reasoning will then be required to enable the stimulus to 
pour along the auditory nerves to the cells in the temporal 
lobes of the brain and to give them that peculiar modification 
which can result only from the song of the robin or the blue- 
bird. 

If parents and teachers would merely expose their children 



136 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

to such stimuli, cerebral modification and reaction would cer- 
tainly take place without the necessity for constant worry or 
supervision. Much of the resulting good might thus be uncon- 
sciously obtained, but it would be neither the worse nor the 
less permanent for that. The ascetic may dislike to see the 
little prattler unconsciously played on by the grand stimuli of 
nature. The ascetic may wish that all improvement came as 
the result of tears, groans, and the hard processes of abstract 
thought. But in spite of him, much of our improvement or 
deterioration comes unconsciously. Emerson understood the 
beneficial effect of natural stimuli exerting an unconscious in- 
fluence when he wrote : " The poet, the orator bred in the 
woods, whose senses have been nurtured by their fair and ap- 
peasing changes, year after year, without design or heed, shall 
not lose their lessons in the roar of cities and the broil of poli- 
tics. Long hereafter, amid agitation and terror in national 
councils, these solemn images shall reappear in their morning 
lustre, as fit symbols for the language of the hour. At the call 
of a noble sentiment, again the woods wave, the pines murmur, 
the river rolls and shines, and the cattle low upon the moun- 
tains, putting the spells of persuasion, the keys of power, into 
his hands." 

While sensations from natural objects are certain to modify 
the central nerve cells without outside intervention or expla- 
nation, it is true that* children's senses will be far better cul- 
tivated if they are so fortunate as to have a good observer 
direct their attention to the proper things and to the most 
worthy qualities in those things. The same photographic ap- 
paratus will do far better work in the hands of a man who 
knows how to focus and adjust it properly. A good parent 
or teacher stands in precisely the same relation to the nerve 
apparatus of a child. « Attention is the focus of consciousness, 



SPECIAL SENSORY TRAINING 1 37 

and the one who can adjust the child's attention properly has 
thereby put him in the only royal road to the most perfect 
development. 

There are few good cultivators of the senses to-day, for the 
reason that few teachers had their own senses well trained 
while young. For many years sense training has been theo- 
retically commended and practically discouraged. They lay 
themselves open to a peculiar charge, who insist that all 
knowledge has its foundation in the senses, and who yet see 
that almost all a child's time allotted to study is taken up 
with poring over books. In a certain city a good observer 
not long ago on a bright spring morning took an entire class 
from the dingy school-building into the fields, where the 
flowers were starting and the birds singing. He was severely 
criticised by some school officials and parents, who said : 
"The children ought to have been studying their books and 
learning something instead of running around and wasting 
their time in that way ! " Such sages ought to ponder truths 
like these : " Lazarus shows that by far the greatest number 
of Roman authors who afterwards attained celebrity were not 
born in Rome itself; he thinks the cause of their greatness 
may be found in the impressions of their early youth; the 
child in the country has simpler but oft-repeated impres- 
sions ; hence they endure longer and the psychical actions 
become more concentrated, while the rapidly changing and 
varying impressions of the metropolis are more volatile, re- 
main a less .time themselves, and yet render the inner con- 
centration more difficult." 1 

, The study of books will be much easier later in life if the 

senses have first been well trained. When reading a play 

of Shakspere or a chapter of Ruskin, we notice that the 

1 Radestock's Habit in Education, p. 57. 



138 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

reading is both pleasant and rapid if we can, as we read, 
form interpretative images based on our own experience. 
On the other hand, it is never easy to train the senses after 
twenty. Dr. Karl Lange has come to the conclusion that the 
knowledge which a well-trained child of six has acquired, sur- 
passes in value the acquisitions of any student during his 
university period. 

The fact that certain sensory tracts in the brains of those 
who are early deprived of some sense do not fully develop 
is certainly important enough to cause us to train to the best 
of our ability all the senses of the young. The practical 
question then confronts us : How shall we best develop every 
sensory brain tract while it is still plastic ? 

Before we proceed to answer this question specifically, we 
must consider the objections of those who say that it is per- 
fectly proper that one sense should be well developed while 
the rest are not, — that we need our piano-tuners, artists, per- 
fumers, tea-tasters, and that these must have one sense de- 
veloped at the expense of others. Again, these objectors say 
that some children are born with certain sensory tracts well 
developed and with others that no amount of training will 
raise to the first rank. 

We grant that the conditions of life are frequently such 
that one sense must be used more than another and hence 
be better developed. We also grant that some who will 
make the great musicians of the future may have at birth 
a brain that will lend itself better to auditory than to visual 
development. We fail, however, to recognize any argument 
in the mere assertion that if any one has naturally a weak 
left arm he should therefore neglect to exercise it. The mere 
fact that any portion of the body or any function is weak is 
in itself an argument for judicious exercise in that direction. 



SPECIAL SENSORY TRAINING 1 39 

Some persons think that after they have discovered that a 
child has a better memory for things heard than for things 
seen, his future sensory training ought to be mainly auditory. 
Of course, advantage should be taken of hereditary natural 
capacity, but even this will improve in a healthier way if the 
other powers are developed at the same time. This world is 
not made up exclusively of either sight or sound phenomena. 
Hence a large part of it must be lost to the one trained in 
a one-sided way. Such a one will not be able to apperceive 
things outside of his own narrow sphere. They will have no 
meaning for him, because he has never paid attention to 
their relations to other things. The claim that the senses of 
a child should be trained only in the direction of what is to 
be his chief work is as untenable as the assertion that a child 
intending to become a physician should at once be put to 
studying anatomy and the pharmacopoeia, and should not 
first have a university education. Any specialists trained in 
this way will perform their work without broad insight into 
its important relations with other things. 

It is further probable that as the sensory cells grow stronger 
through exercise, more associative fibres lead from them to 
other parts of the brain. Hence, lack of exercise may cause 
not only undeveloped cells but also a diminished number of 
associative fibers. Even such second-rate brain cells might 
thus be at a further disadvantage by being poorly associated 
with each other. Such a brain could, of course, never fully use 
in combination what powers it possessed. Professor Donaldson 
rightly says : " We should hardly expect much appreciation of 
colour in a person brought up in the dark, however good his 
natural endowments in this direction. Thus any lack of early 
experience may leave a spot permanently undeveloped in the 
central system — a condition of much significance, for each 



140 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

t 

locality in the cerebrum is not only a place at which reactions, 
using the word in a narrow sense, may occur, but by way of it 
pass fibres having more distant connections, and its lack of 
development probably reduces the associated value of these 
also." 1 

The first practical rule for the development of the different 
sensory areas in the brain may be thus formulated : Put the 
brain in such an environment that the fitting stimulus may flow 
along the proper sense nerve to the cells in the related brain 
tract. Our present task must be to determine what objects in 
nature afford the best stimuli for the different sensory areas. 
Before the child is old enough to reason or to know our aim 
definitely, we can expose him to these stimuli. 

Objects for Cultivating the Olfactory Sense 

We have seen that Shakspere and Milton used many odour 
images, and that these great men were exposed to an environ- 
ment which allowed the development of the sense of smell. 
The odours of the country are the best for cultivating the 
olfactory sense. For those who live chiefly in the city, as well 
as for all in the winter time, it is easy to obtain from an apothe- 
cary small boxes of different objects with which to cultivate the 
sense of smell. For his own experiments the writer procured 
at small cost pasteboard boxes filled with the following named 
substances. Pupils should be blindfolded while undergoing 
the tests : 



Pennyroyal 


Caraway 


Gum benzoin 

l 


Sage 


Chamomile 


Valerian root 


Orris root 


Black pepper 


Olibanum 


Cinnamon 


Red pepper 


Ginger root 


Cloves 


Celery seed 


Gum turpentine 



1 The Growth of the Brain, p. 348. 



SPECIAL SENSORY TRAINING 



141 



Licorice 


Fennel 


Assafcetida 


Sassafras 


Saffron 


Myrrh 


Allspice 


Lavender flowers 


Star anise 


Cardamom 


Gum opium 
Manna 


Tonka bean 


The following named oils and perfumes 


were placed in small 


bottles : 






Oil of peppermint 


Oil of bay leaves 


Oil of bergamot 


Oil of clove 


Oil of rosemary- 


Oil of spearmint 


Oil of wintergreen 


Oil of citronella 


Oil of patchouly 


Oil of cedar 


Oil of verbena 


Oil of bitter almonds 


Oil of lemon 


Oil of nutmeg 
Oil of lavender 


Oil of eucalyptus 



The finest olfactory training is to be obtained from these 
flowers in their native habitat : 



Goldenrod 


Orange flowers 


Lily of the valley 


Majoram 


Elder flowers 


Heliotrope 


Rosemary 


Jasmine 


Carnation 


Honeysuckle 


Tuberose 


Geranium 


Clover 


Violet 


Rose 


Daisy 


Hyacinth 


Sweet pea 


Tansy 


Lilac 


Blossoms of the peach and apple 



In the winter time, perfumes from nearly all these flowers are 
obtainable, but there is no other place that can compare with 
the country in the summer for training the sense of smell. A 
little practice will enable most people, when blindfolded, to 
identify by the odour alone such fruits as the apple, pear, 
grape, peach, orange, lemon, plum, strawberry, and pineapple. 

Objects for Gustatory Training y{ 

We herewith give a number of easily accessible foods and 
flavours for training the sense of taste. This sense demands 



142 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

more cultivation than it has usually received. A discriminating 
sense of taste makes us more interested in what we eat. This 
reacts upon the cookery and makes that better. Of extreme 
importance is the fact that those who are interested in what 
they eat, usually eat slowly, masticate their food well, and en- 
deavour to have the viands yield their utmost flavour. The 
digestion of such persons will be better than of those who 
hurriedly bolt their food, scarcely noticing the different 
flavours. We can investigate in another chapter whether 
those ascetics are right who maintain that it is wicked or 
gross to take pleasure from the taste of a strawberry or a 
peach because the pleasure is not sufficiently "immaterial" 
or sublimated. 

The sense of taste, as we ordinarily have it, is a resultant of 
three different senses, — smell, touch, and taste. There is cer- 
tainly no harm in developing the three senses together, any 
more than there is in exercising the legs and arms at the same 
time. But if we wish to cultivate the sense of taste by itself 
as much as possible, the pupil must be blindfolded, his nostrils 
stopped, or a bottle of perfumery held under them. We shall 
then find mistakes made in identifying such common edibles 
as lamb, veal, duck, chicken, and beef. Of course touch is 
always present to assist the identifications of taste. Much of 
the pleasure from eating jelly is due to the delicate touch 
sensations awakened in the tongue. 

It will be best at first for pupils to be blindfolded and 
taught to distinguish with unerring precision between the edi- 
bles named below. They should in every instance be put into 
the pupils' mouths by another person. In the case of fruits 
like strawberries, cherries, blackberries, or grapes, we must cut 
them up into slices before they are laid on the tongue, or 
otherwise the object will be more easily identified by its shape 



SPECIAL SENSORY TRAINING 



143 



than by the taste. These edibles must not be tasted in too 
quick succession, for the nerves of taste retain for some 
time the effects of stimulation from any one viand. Neither 
must the exercises be continued too long, for all nerve 
cells soon show the effects of fatigue due to continuous 
stimulation. 



Strawberry 


Cranberry 


Tea 


Grape 


Citron 


Coffee 


Apple 


Plum 


Chocolate 


Pear 


Raisin 


Rhubarb 


Peach 


Vanilla 


Ginger 


Orange 


Wintergreen 


Honey 


Lemon 


Peppermint 


Sugar 


Quince 


Spearmint 


Salt 


Blackberry 


Sassafras 


Veal 


Cherry 


Catnip 


Venison 


Pineapple 


Fennel 


Lamb 


Banana 


Caraway 


Chicken 


Raspberry 


Sage 


Duck 


Currant 


Cinnamon 


Goose 


Gooseberry 


Clove 

Nutmeg 


Quail 



These lines from Keats appeal for interpretation most strongly 
to the sense of taste, and they indicate additional objects for 
sense discrimination : 

"... he from forth the closet brought a heap 
Of candied apple, quince and plum, and gourd ; 
With jellies soother than the creamy curd, 
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon ; 
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr'd 
From Fez ; and spiced dainties, every one, 
From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon." 



144 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



Objects for Cultivating the Sense of Touch 

It has been said that the blind alone have their tactile sense 
adequately cultivated. This neglect is certainly not from lack 
of the proper tactile material, for it is hard work to avoid this. 
Everything, from the sides of the infant's cradle to the toys 
with which he begins to play, cultivates the sense of touch. 
While we may grant that our bookish education tends toward 
imperfect cultivation of all the senses, it is probable that touch 
is generally the best educated of all. This may almost be 
called the foundation sense for sight. When, on looking at 
a piece of cloth, we say that it has a very rough nap, we are 
basing our conclusions on past sensations of touch. But for 
these, sight would be powerless to tell us whether a surface 
that looked that way would feel rough. 

We need mention here only a few of the numberless things 
that we can handle, only such as may prove most serviceable 
for cultivating refinement of touch. The pupil should be 
blindfolded and asked to identify the following named articles : 



Silk 


Dandelion. down 


Grape 


Velvet 


Feathers 


Plum 


Wool 


Clover 


Currant 


Linen 


Pear 


Cranberry 


Cotton 


Quince 


Blackberry 


Hemp 


Apple 


Strawberry 


Flax 


Peach 


Raspberry 



After these objects can be surely named from touching them, 
it is fine practice to study the leaves of the more common 
forest trees with the aid of both the eye and the hand. After 
the leaves are familiarly known by the aid of both the senses, the 
pupil should be blindfolded and asked to identify by touch 



SPECIAL SENSORY TRAINING 



45 



Ihe leaves of the elm, maple, chestnut, hickory, black walnut, 
oak, dogwood, birch, beech, sycamore, willow, pine, larch, 
hemlock, cedar, and whatever other trees are found in the 
neighbourhood. The leaves of flowers and plants may also be 
treated in the same way. It also requires considerable nicety 
of touch to distinguish between the heads of wheat, rye, and 
barley. Of course any article about the house, from a water 
pitcher to a spool of silk, can be brought to a blindfolded 
child to name by the combined tactile, thermal, and muscular 
senses. 



Sounds for Developing the Auditory Tract 

We shall here enumerate some of the more common sounds, 
which may be brought to play on the auditory brain tracts. 
Here, as before, the country is demanded for environment 
during a portion of the year. 



Song of the robin 
Song of the catbird 
Song of the thrush 
Song of the oriole 
Song of the bluebird 
Song of the mocking-bird 
Song of the swallow 
Song of the blackbird 
Song of the magpie 



Drumming of woodpeckers 
Cawing of crows 
Cackling of fowl 
Crowing of roosters 
Quacking of ducks 
Cry of owl 
Honking of geese 

L 



Bleating of lambs 
Neighing of horses 
Lowing of kine 
Barking of dogs 
Chirping of crickets 
Hum of bees 

-^"Ringing of church bells 

Sound of ^Eolian harp 

Sound of piano 

Sound of violin 

Sound of organ 

Sound of flute 

Sound of drum 

Sound of bagpipe 
^-Sound of huntsman^ horn 

Sound of harp 

Sound of orchestral music 



146 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

Sound of the wind among the Songs in varying key 

pine trees Beating of rain against the win- 
Rustling of leaves dow panes 
Sound of running water Various noises made by the 
Sound of the waves wind 

Objects for Visual Training 

The objects that appeal to sight, and hence exercise and 
develop the visual brain tract, are so numerous that it is not 
necessary to specify them at any great length. The vast ma- 
jority of objects appeal to sight \ only a comparatively few to 
hearing, taste, or smell. In this class we may put natural 
objects ranging from a cloud to a leaf, from a star to a stone. 
We shall, therefore, mention only a few of the many objects 
upon which sight may be trained. 

All the common wild flowers, Autumnal tints 

from the daisy to the dan- Frost 

delion Stars 

Garden flowers Moon 

The shape of the leaves of all Human faces 

the most common trees Animals 

Various grasses Snowflakes 

Colour and form of the birds Coloured ribbons, garments 

Colour and shape of the clouds Paints 

Colour and shape of the different Colour of eyes, of hair 

fruits Birds 1 nests and eggs 
The rainbow 

The importance of this special training of each sensory 
brain tract while it is most plastic should neither be overlooked 
nor despised. Every one of the masters among men has had 
his senses trained either consciously or unconsciously by nat- 
ural objects such as we have indicated. We pick up a biography 



SPECIAL SENSORY TRAINING 147 

at random, for instance, that of Robert Browning, and read : 
" It is interesting to know that many of the nature touches 
were indirectly due to the poet's solitary rambles, by dawn, 
sundown, and ' dewy eve ' in the wooded districts south of 
Dulwich at Hatcham and upon Wimbledon Common, whither 
he was often wont to wander and to ramble for hours. . . . 

" I have heard him say that his faculty of observation at 
that time would not have appeared despicable to a Seminole 
or an Iroquois : he saw and watched everything, the bird on 
the wing, the snail dragging its shell up the pendulous wood- 
bine, the bee adding to his golden treasure as he swung in the 
bells of the campanula, the green fly darting hither and thither 
like an animated seedling, the spider weaving her gossamer 
from twig to twig, the woodpecker needfully scrutinizing the 
lichen on the gnarled oak-bole, the passage of the wind through 
leaves or across grass, the motions and the shadows of the 
clouds, and so forth. . . . He never forgot the bygone sun- 
sets and great stars he saw in those days of his fervid youth. 
Browning remarked once that the romance of his life was in 
his own soul ; and on another occasion I heard him smilingly 
add, to some one's vague assertion that in Italy only was there 
any romance left, ' Ah, well, I would like to include poor old 
Camberwell.' " Browning thought that romance still clung to 
his birthplace only because his youth was trained there in the 
right way. 

Burroughs says of Tennyson : " A lady told me that she was 
once walking with him in the fields when they came to a spring 
that bubbled up through shifting sands in a very pretty manner, 
and Tennyson, in order to see exactly how the spring behaved, 
got down on his hands and knees and peered a long time into 
the water. The incident is worth repeating as showing how 
intently a great poet studies nature." After knowing this, we 



148 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

need not be surprised to meet with such a perfect simile as this 
in Tennyson's poetry : 

"... arms on which the standing muscle sloped, 
As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, 
Running too vehemently to break upon it." 

The next century will probably see a marked reformation 
in education, especially in teaching the child more from the 
book of nature than from the printed page. 



CHAPTER IX 

Cerebral Development by the Formation of 
Images 

To have the various sensory stimuli pouring into the brain 
is but one-half the battle in modifying the central nervous 
system. In order to render this modification more definite 
and lasting, images of these various stimuli must be recalled. 
For instance, after a rose has been seen, its visual appearance, 
odour, and softness to the sense of touch should be recalled. 
A successful recall helps to modify the brain in the same way 
that the original stimulus did. This truth has received scant 
appreciation, even by physiological psychologists, in the train- 
ing of the young. 

In order to understand the importance of recalling sensory 
stimuli, the physical basis of memory must- be known. Let A 
be a brain cell or tract which receives the modification due to 
seeing a rose. When the visual image of the rose is recalled, 
there is action in precisely this same tract. There is no abso- 
lute line of demarcation between the action in this tract, when 
the sensory stimulus pours directly in, and the action resulting 
from recalling this experience. For our purpose, we may call 
attention to a difference which usually exists. The presence 
of an actual object to a sense organ generally causes more 
intense action in the related brain cells than the internal re- 
vival does. If we are looking at an actual orange, certain 
brain cells are usually set in more vigorous action than when 

149 



150 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

we recall the image of the orange. One of the ways by which 
we decide whether the action in the brain cells does or does 
not correspond to a real object is by the intensity of that ac- 
tion. If the action were of equal intensity in both cases, we 
should have an illusion, that is, think we saw an orange where 
none existed. 1 In the case of sane persons, these illusions 
are by no means infrequent. If we have thought intensely 
about a certain thing, or if our mind is filled with images of 
it, we often think we see it when we do not. We often hear 
some one say, " I thought I was positive I saw a certain per- 
son or thing in a certain place. I cannot for the life of me 
understand how I came to be so mistaken." 

It has been for some time noticed that the most honest men 
when playing lawn tennis often see the ball strike some inches 
away from the spot of actual contact. " He is honest when he 
is not playing tennis," was said of such a man. The fact was 
that the man meant to be honest at all times, but when he saw 
the ball taking a certain direction, he sometimes projected the 
image ahead of the ball and saw it strike in an advantageous 
position. 

There is scarcely any difference of opinion among experts 
over the fact that images are correlated with activity in brain 
cells, and that this activity tends toward further brain modi- 
fication. Ribot puts the case definitely : " If, with closed 
eyes, we keep for a length of time an image of very lively 
colours before the imagination, and then opening the eyes 
suddenly we fix them upon a white surface, we see thereon for 
an instant the image contemplated in imagination, but in the 
complementary colour. This fact, as is observed by Wundt, 
from whom we borrow it, proves that the nerve action is the 
same in the two cases — in the sense-perception and in the 

1 See Halleck's Psychology and Psychic Culture, pp. 108, 109. 



CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 



151 



memory." 1 Wundt has lately shown that the activity in these 
central cells may flow out and affect the sense organs them- 
selves. He says : " The same sensations may be perceived, 
though less clearly, to accompany memorial ideation, at least 
when the ideas are vivid. An object seen with the mind's eye 
is referred to a certain distance from us, and we consequently 
accommodate the muscular apparatus of our eye to it. The 
tones of a melody which we recall in memory may give rise to 
a tension in the ear as clearly perceptible as though they were 
real. Even the fainter pictorial ideas which constitute abstract 
thinking are not wholly without the sense-accompaniment." 2 
Ladd speaks to the same effect : " The recurrence of any 
memory image is, therefore, significant of the continuance of 
the effects of previous reactions to stimulation, in the shape of 
a tendency of the same nervous substance to react in ways 
similar to those in which it has formerly acted. ... 

" It is assumed that the cortical centres concerned in sensa- 
tion and in ideation are the same, for the same objects at least; 
and this assumption is confirmed by all which we know of the 
physiology of the brain. . . . 

"The cerebral processes which underlie sensation are like 
those which underlie image-making, in that similar changes in 
the same connected groups of nervous elements form the 
physical basis for both kinds of psychosis. ... By increasing 
the intensity of revived central processes, more or less of hallu- 
cination may take place ; and, finally, the mental image may 
become so like the sensations which it represents as to be with 
difficulty or not at all distinguished from them." 3 

The fact that the energy generated by these centrally initi- 

1 Diseases of Memory, Chap. I. 

2 Lectures on Hunian and Animal Psychology, p. 247. 

3 Psychology, pp. 241, 242. 



152 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

ated images tends to flow out and affect the body can be 
demonstrated in many ways. Form a vivid idea of a file being 
drawn across your teeth, or of the dentist's drill being rapidly 
whirled around in a cavity, and notice the shiver that will 
sometimes affect the whole frame. Imagine that you are 
drawing a sharp razor vigorously across the ball of your thumb, 
or that you are sucking a lemon, and you will very likely have 
a sensation in your thumb or mouth. A man present at the dis- 
interment of a coffin, by the order of the court, smelled such a 
putrid odour that he became violently ill. The action in the 
olfactory brain cells had caused the sensation of odour, for the 
coffin when opened was found empty. The influence of the 
imagination upon the body is due to the action of central 
brain cells. 

The fact that the recall of past sensory experiences tends 
to modify the brain more effectually holds good, no matter 
whether we accept the theory that special brain cells are again 
set in action by the image, or that the same brain tract may be 
concerned in different reactions. In the latter case, reactions 
or vibrations of the same kind as the sensory stimulus, will 
accompany the image. The more often a thing reacts in the 
same way, the more definite are the modifications. If the 
same fingers have different movements for playing the harp 
and the piano, anything which leads to the repetition of either 
or both of those movements, tends to make them more defi- 
nite and lasting. 

It is possible to form of the same object as many as seven 
different images, more or less definite according to the special 
sense and to the peculiarity of the person. For instance, con- 
sider our sensory experiences with the cocoanut. When we 
lift it, there is (i) a sensation due to the muscular movement. 
We may afterward remember how heavy it felt. (2) As we 



CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 1 53 

pass our fingers over its shell, we obtain a characteristic tactile 
sensation, which we can reproduce. (3) We shall experience 
different temperature sensations in connection with the interior 
edible part, according to whether it has been kept on ice or in 
warm water. (4) When we tap on its shell there will be a 
sound, which we can recall. (5) There will be found a certain 
odour capable of reproduction. (6) When we eat the cocoanut, 
there will be a peculiar taste which can be remembered. 
(7) After looking at the cocoanut, we can reproduce its visual 
aspect. In addition to these seven sensations experienced in 
connection with the object, there are other memories associ- 
ated with it, for instance, the memory of writing, of uttering, 
and of hearing the word " cocoanut." 

All these different kinds of memory correspond to definite 
changes in brain cells, either in molecular arrangement or in 
dynamic reactions. When images corresponding to any sen- 
sory experience are recalled, there is the same kind of action 
as when the senses are externally stimulated, although this 
action is usually less intense. It becomes necessary, therefore, 
for us frequently to recall as many of these experiences as 
possible, if we wish the brain to acquire that permanent modi- 
fication which is essential to lasting memory. 

It is hard work for some to understand that there can be 
anything but sight images. When we see a rose, we can close 
our eyes and recall its visual appearance. What colour or 
shape has an odour image? we are asked. This question is 
just as sensible as to ask, What odour has the visual image of a 
rose ? The senses of smell, of taste, of touch, and of hearing 
are as independent of sight as sight is of them. Each sense 
has its own memory images. The reason why this seems 
incomprehensible to many persons is because the majority 
have their senses very unevenly developed. In the case of 



154 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

most persons, sight is the sense which yields the most definite 
images. There are, however, many who can seem to hear a 
tune played by an instrument more vividly than they can 
recall the visual aspect of the instrument. To some, the most 
distinct attribute of the rose is its odour. Others can seem to 
feel soft things when they are no longer present to the sense of 
touch. When castor oil is mentioned to some people, the 
memories of taste are the most pronounced. 

Some psychologists with a poor sense of smell have claimed 
that no definite odour images could be recalled, that only the 
muscular sensation in again sniffing in air from the imaginary 
object makes us think by the vividness of the accompanying 
muscular sensation that we are recalling the odour image. 
Against this view there is the positive testimony of persons who 
say that when a word like "pear," "rose," "turnip," or " cod- 
fish " is mentioned, the first image that comes to their mind is 
a definite odour image. Of course, the preliminary muscular 
sensation, due to inhaling the odour from the imaginary object, 
helps to make the image more definite and vivid. 

Normal culture would see that the images of all the senses 
were equally distinct. No branch of training has been more 
neglected. The certain truth that the recall of images tends 
to modify the brain while it remains plastic has, as yet, received 
scant application in teaching. A proper exercise of the imag- 
ing power tends to cultivate all the sensory tracts symmetrically. 
In imaging, we can pass rapidly from the images of one sense 
to those of another. Thus, if we think of the odour of a rose, 
its visual aspect and tactile characteristics can then be brought 
to mind. The odour, taste, touch, and sight of a pineapple can 
be recalled. If we see a thing a dozen times as often as we 
are able to touch it, we can recall its tactile qualities more often 
than its visual, to make up for this deficiency. Introspective 



CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT I 55 

philosophy confirms the statement that the more often we think 
of a thing, the more firmly will it lodge in the memory. The 
physiological psychologist states the truth thus : Repeated ac- 
tions of the same kind tend to make the corresponding brain 
modifications permanent. 

Not very long since, Sir Francis Galton 1 called attention to 
the importance of training pupils to reproduce visual images 
of objects. He did not note the fact that sensory brain tracts 
are developed by such exercise, nor did he say much about the 
importance of such training in connection with direct sensory 
stimulation, but his work had sufficient merit for it to be called 
almost epoch-making. He writes as follows of the importance 
of the visualizing faculty : 

"There is abundant evidence that the visualizing faculty 
admits of being developed by education. The testimony on 
which I would lay especial stress is derived from the published 
experiences of M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, late director of the 
Ecole Nationale in Paris. . . . He trained his pupils with 
extraordinary success, beginning with the simplest figures. . . . 
After three or four months' practice, their visual memory be- 
came greatly strengthened. They had no difficulty in sum- 
moning images at will, in holding them steady, and in drawing 
them. . . . 

"I could mention instances within my own experience in 
which the visualizing faculty has become strengthened by prac- 
tice ; notably one of an eminent electrical engineer, who had 
the power of recalling form with unusual precision, but not 
colour. A few weeks after he had replied to my questions, he 
told me that my inquiries had induced him to practise his 
colour memory, and that he had done so with such suc- 
cess that he was become quite an adept at it, and that the 

1 Inquiries into Htiman Faculty and its Development, London, 1883. 



156 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

newly acquired power was a source of much pleasure to 
him. 

"A useful faculty, easily developed by practice, is that of 
retaining a retinal picture. A scene is flashed upon the eye ; 
the memory of it persists, and details which escaped observa- 
tion during the brief time when it was actually seen, may be 
analyzed and studied at leisure in the subsequent vision." 

He then describes how persons differ in this visualizing power, 
as in the possession of other excellences. Of some he says : 
" They can call up the figure of a friend and make it sit on a 
chair or stand up at will ; they can make it turn round and 
attitudinize in any way, as by mounting it on a bicycle or com- 
pelling it to perform gymnastic feats on a trapeze. They are 
able to build up elaborate geometric structures bit by bit in 
their mind's eye, and add, subtract, or alter at will and at 
leisure. The free action of a vivid visualizing faculty is of 
much importance in connection with the higher processes of 
generalized thought. . . . 

" A visual image is the most perfect form of mental repre- 
sentation wherever the shape, position, and relations of objects 
in space are concerned. It is of importance in every handi- 
craft and profession where design is required. The best work- 
men are those who visualize the whole of what they propose 
to do before they take a tool in their hands. . . . Strategists, 
artists of all denominations, physicists who contrive new experi- 
ments, and in short all who do not follow routine, have need of it. 
The pleasure its use can afford is immense. I have many cor- 
respondents who say that the delight of recalling beautiful 
scenery and great works of art is the highest that they know ; 
they carry whole picture galleries in their minds. Our bookish 
and wordy education tends to repress this valuable gift of 
nature. A faculty that is of importance in all technical and 



CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 1 57 

artistic occupations, that gives accuracy to our perceptions and 
justness to our generalizations, is starved by lazy disuse, instead 
of being cultivated judiciously in such a way as will on the 
whole bring the best return. I believe that a serious study of 
the best method of developing and utilizing this faculty, without 
prejudice to the practice of abstract thought in symbols, is one 
of the many pressing desiderata in the yet unformed science 
of education." 1 

It is pleasing to find such high authority as Sir Francis 
Galton emphasizing something which should form a part of 
the training of every child. What he says of the recall of 
visual images is in large part applicable to the images of all 
the other senses. We are not aware that he or any one else 
has as yet specifically taught the importance of recalling 
images to render sensory brain modifications more definite 
and lasting. It is the province of this chapter to emphasize 
this necessity and to point out special ways in which to 
develop the power under consideration. The average mind 
needs not only to be told that a thing is necessary but also 
to be shown specific ways in which it may be secured. 

There are probably no capacities in which persons differ 
more strongly than in the power to recall different sensory 
experiences. The product of any sense knowledge is a blur 
in the case of some people. Others are excellent in recalling 
visual images, while their auditory images are poor. We shall 
proceed on the assumption that if a person is deficient in any 
direction, there is all the more need for training in that direc- 
tion. If a muscle is naturally weak, by all means let us try 
to strengthen it. True, it may not then become as strong as 
a giant's muscles, but it will improve. 

1 Galton's Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development; pp. 105, 106, 
107, 109, 113, 114. 



158 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



Visual Images for Recall 

In the absence of these objects, summon visual images of 
them. Note whether the image is as vivid as the object when 
before the eye. Are the colours as lively, the forms as dis- 
tinct, the view as extended in the case of a landscape or of 
a number of objects ? 

Rose, daisy, clover, geranium, daffodil, crocus, marigold, vio- 
let, lilac, apple, peach, pear, hawthorn, and laurel blossoms, 
evening cloud, thunder cloud, full moon, quarter moon, the 
"face of a friend, the colour of his hair and eyes, a red, green, 
and yellow apple, the bluish tinge on a cluster of grapes, a 
fish, lobster, cat, horse, lamb, cow, dog, rooster, duck, goose, a 
mountain, hill, landscape, stream with varying vegetation along 
its bank, the constellations of the stars, the varying surface of 
the ocean, a snow bank, snowflakes. 

Can you summon distinct images of an oak and an elm leaf, 
place them side by side, and compare them? Can you bring 
the image of a remembered evening cloud and place the 
colour beside the cloud at which you are looking, and detect 
a difference in the shades ? Can you go to a shop and match 
the colour of a ribbon left at home? Can you recall the 
images of two absent flowers, place these images side by side, 
and note the difference in the shape and colour? How many 
distinct shades of colour can you recall and project upon a 
sheet of white paper? Do salmon, lavender, magenta, and 
dove colour represent distinct shades, or are these terms prin- 
cipally meaningless sounds ? After visiting an art gallery, can 
you recall vivid images of the principal paintings and take 
pleasure in. looking at them ? In reciting from memory, can 
you see the letters on an imaginary printed page? 



CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 1 59 

Sir Francis Galton's 1 epoch-making questions on the visual- 
izing power are in part as follows : " Before addressing your- 
self to any of the questions," he says, " think of some definite 
object — suppose it is your breakfast-table as you sat down to 
it this morning — and consider carefully the picture that rises 
before your mind's eye. 

" 1. Illumination. — Is the image dim or fairly clear? Is 
its brightness comparable to that of the actual scene ? 

" 2. Definition. — Are all the objects pretty well defined at 
the same time, or is the place of sharpest definition at any 
one moment more contracted than it is in a real scene ? 

" 3. Colouring. — Are the colours of the china, of the toast, 
bread, mustard, meat, parsley, or whatever may have been on 
the table, quite distinct and natural? 

"4. Extent of field of view. — Call up the image of some 
panoramic view (the walls of your room might suffice) ; can 
you force yourself to see mentally a wider range of it than 
could be taken in by any single glance of the eyes ? Can you 
mentally see more than three faces of a die, or more than one 
hemisphere of a globe at the same instant of time? 

" 7. Persons. — Can you recall with distinctness the features 
of all near relations and many other persons? Can you at 
will cause your mental image of any one or most of them to 
sit, stand, or turn slowly round? Can you deliberately seat 
the image of a well-known person in the chair and see it with 
enough distinctness to enable you to sketch it leisurely (sup- 
posing yourself able to draw) ? 

" 8. Scenery. — Do you preserve the recollection of scenery 
with much precision of detail, and do you find pleasure in 
dwelling on it ? Can you easily form mental pictures from 

1 Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, pp. 378, 379. 



l6o EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

the descriptions of scenery that are so frequently met with in 
novels and books of travel ? " 



Tactile, Temperature, and Muscular Images 

When any one stoops to pick up a handful of snow or a 
piece of ice, he has three distinct sensations ; one from touch- 
ing the snow, one from the temperature of the snow, and one 
from the movements of the muscles employed in picking up 
the snow. When one eats a teaspoonful of ice-cream, there 
are also three sensations besides taste, — a tactile sensation 
when the cream comes in contact with the tongue, a sensation 
of temperature, and a muscular sensation in raising the spoon 
to the mouth and in moving the tongue. 

Each of these sensations may be more or less accurately 
recalled. There must be quite a definite modification of the 
nervous system due to these different sensations. In many 
cases this modification remains largely sub-conscious, yet when 
we test a book in our hands and say that it weighs a pound 
and a half, it is clear that we are comparing this sensation with 
a remembered muscular sensation caused by that weight. 

Let us endeavour to revive the sensations we originally had 
from 



Touching snow 
Touching files 
Touching the edge of a knife 
Touching, feathers 
Touching glue 
Touching molasses 
Touching cotton 
Touching linen 
Touching velvet 



Touching 
Touching 
Touch 



Touching 
Touching 
Touching 
Touching 



wool 
hemp 
„ flax 
Touching fur 

dough 

ice 

water 

putty 

pitch 



CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 



161 



Recall images of the varied muscular, tactile, and tempera- 
ture sensations experienced while sleighing, skating, walking 
against a cold wind, ascending stairs, shaking hands, rowing 
a boat, playing a piano or any other musical instrument, 
dancing, house cleaning, moving furniture, slipping, or falling 
down, stroking a dog, cat, or the neck of a horse. 



Taste Images for Recall 

After repeatedly tasting the following named edibles, see how 
distinctly you can recall the 



Taste of chicken 


Taste of lemon 


Taste of honey 


Taste of duck 


Taste of strawberry 


Taste of sugar 


Taste of quail 


Taste of raspberry 


Taste of molasses 


Taste of turkey 


Taste of pineapple 


Taste of vinegar 


Taste of shad 


Taste of peach 


Taste of castor oil 


Taste of salmon 


Taste of pear 


Taste of turnip 


Taste of herring 


Taste of sour apple 


Taste of celery 


Taste of oyster 


Taste of sweet apple 


Taste of mustard 


Taste of veal 


Taste of custard 


Taste of pepper 


Taste of beef 


Taste of chocolate 


Taste of radishes 


Taste of mutton 


Taste of coffee 
Taste of maple syrup 


Taste of jelly 



Can you place two taste images side by side, and be clearly 
aware of the difference between them? Compare, for instance, 
the remembered taste of chicken with turkey, of apple with 
peach, of cabbage with turnip, of mustard with horseradish. 

Can you imagine the taste of a lemon or of a sour apple so 
vividly that you can note the resulting effects in the mouth, in 
perhaps a puckering sensation, or feeling as if the saliva was 
curdling ? 



1 62 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

It may be wise to call attention again to the fact that the more 
interest one feels in the taste and flavour of his food, the slower 
will he eat and the better will be his digestion. Many persons 
eat so fast and so many different things together, that no 
definite taste images are formed. 



Odour Images for Recall 

After carefully experimenting with each one, see how dis- 
tinctly you can recall the 

Odour of the rose Odour of the sassafras 

Odour of the tuberose Odour of pennyroyal 

Odour of the honeysuckle Odour of fennel 

Odour of the new-mown hay Odour of turpentine 

Odour of the lilac Odour of tansy 

Odour of the geranium leaf Odour of the hyacinth 

Odour of the magnolia Odour of the carnation 

Odour of the daisy Odour of the blossoming orchard 

After a little practice the majority of people, who have an 
average sensitiveness to odour, will be surprised at the rapid 
improvement in their power to recall different scents. 



Auditory Images for Recall 

Each day practise recalling some of the sounds mentioned 
below. For instance, recall the 

Moaning of the pine Buzzing of bees 

Cackling of domestic fowl Whistle of a locomotive 

Songs of the birds ; e.g. robin, Bleating of sheep 

canary, oriole, thrush Barking of dogs 



CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 1 63 

Sound of the flute, harp, violin, Neighing of horses 

piano, organ, bagpipe, in play- Lowing of kine 

ing some well-known air Whistle of quail 

Cry of the owl Whir of a circular saw 

Ringing of a bell Voice of various friends 

Can you recall the combined melody of the sounds of the 
forest, — e.g. rustling of leaves; song of birds; chirping of 
crickets ; resonance of the cicada, katydid, or locust ; tapping 
of the woodpecker's beak upon trees ? Can you seem to hear 
a well-known air played from beginning to end as distinctly as 
if some instrument was actually playing it? 

We shall now show how literature is constantly presenting us 
with objects wherewith to cultivate our imaging power. These 
objects will be found more interesting than those we have 
given in isolated lists, just as a wild flower is more charming 
in its own habitat than when plucked and placed in a vase. 
These examples will indicate to teachers and to students of 
literature how indefinite much of their knowledge is, and how 
more accurate cultivation of their senses may be necessary 
before they can form definite images. The writer has actually 
used these examples from literature, and others like them, to 
train the imaging power of his pupils. He would make 
them describe as accurately as possible the corresponding 
image in their own mind's eye. Where they failed from lack 
of sensory experience, he noticed how eager they were at the 
first opportunity to remedy the defect, and how much pleasure 
they had when the words evoked the sensory images necessary 
for the proper interpretation. 

Rapid headway toward definite knowledge and modification 
of brain cells can be secured by forming images in terms of all 
the senses to interpret objects mentioned in literature. 



1 64 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

Examples which show how the Study of Litera- 
ture MAY SERVE TO CULTIVATE IMAGING POWER 

Form definite images corresponding to the italicized words 
below. Whenever more than one sense can be used in the 
interpretation, employ as many as possible. If a bird is 
mentioned, recall the song as well as the visual aspect ; if a 
flower, the odour as well as the colour and shape. 

" And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad 
And the musk of the roses blown, 
For a breeze of morning moves, 
And the planet of Love is on high, 
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves 
On a bed of daffodil sky.''' 1 

Tennyson. 

In this passage, there should be formed a distinct image of 
the visual appearance and odour of the woodbine and of the 
rose. Tactile and temperature images of a morning breeze, 
visual images of the planet Venus, and of a sky the colour of 
the daffodil must also be formed. The writer can testify from 
his personal experience that pupils, in order to have their 
images of the colour of the sky exact, brought into the class- 
room the first daffodils that appeared. The students would 
probably not have done this, had they not been required to 
image all objects referring to any of the senses. 

" The soft complaining flute.' 1 '' 

The visual aspect and sound of the flute should be distinctly 
recalled. 

" And let your silver chime 
Move in melodious time," 



CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT I 65 

The sound of the ringing of a chime of bells should be 
represented here, and, less important, the appearance of the 
bells. 

" Call for the robin redbreast and the wren 
Since o'er shady groves they hover." 

Image the robin and the wren distinctly enough to be drawn, 
then describe the variation in their colour, proceeding back 
from the head. Recall their characteristic song. Image dis- 
tinctly a grove. 

" Fear no more the lightning flash 
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone." 

The above italicized words ought to suggest vivid visual and 
auditory images. 

" When icicles hang by the wall." 

Here the temperature and visual senses are appealed to. 

" It was a lover and his lass 
That o'er the green cornfield did pass." 

Describe the dress, complexion, colour of hair and eyes of 
the lover and lass you seem to see in the cornfield. 

" There will we sit upon the rocks 
And see the shepherds feed their flocks, 
By shallow rivers to whose falls 
Melodious birds sing madrigals." 

"The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet." 

" A bee-hive^s hum shall soothe my ear." 

" A violet by a mossy stone." 

"... a forsaken bird's nest fill'd with snow" 



1 66 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

In the above lines, as many images as possible should be 
formed of the objects referred to in italics. For instance, the 
odour and visual image of the violet, the touch as well as the 
sight of the mossy stone, the temperature image of the snow, 
should be recalled. 

" The swan on still Saint Mary's Lake 
Float double, swan and shadow" 

" Now all the tree-tops lay asleep, 
Like green waves on the sea." 

" The frozen wind crept on above, 
The freezing stream below." 

The last two lines appeal more strongly to the temperature 
than to the visual sense. 

In order to get to sleep, Wordsworth used to practise re- 
calling images of 

" A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by 

One after one ; the soimd of rain and bees 
Murmuring '; the fall of rivers, winds and seas, 
Smooth fields, white sheets of water and pure sky." 

"... floating water lilies, broad and bright." 

The person who can image the following objects distinctly 
may consider himself fitted to read the poetry of nature : 

"... thou shalt hear 
Distant harvest-carols clear ; 
Rustle of the reaped com ; 
Sweet birds antheming the morn : 
And in the same moment — hark ! 
'Tis the early April lark, 
Or the rooks with busy caw, 



CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 167 

Foraging for sticks and straw. 
Thou shalt at one glance behold 
The daisy and the 7narigold; 
White-plumed lilies, and the first 
Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst ; 
Shaded hyacinth, alway 
Sapphire queen of the mid-May ; 
And every leaf, and every flower, 
Pearled with the self-same shower, 
Thou shalt see the field mouse peep 
Meagre, from its celled sleep ; 
And the snake all winter-thin 
Cast on sunny bank its skin ; 
Freckled nest eggs thou shalt see, 
Hatching in the hawthorn tree 
When the hen-bird ^s wing doth rest 
Quiet on her mossy nest ; 
Then the hurry and alarm 
When the bee-hive casts its swarm ; 
Acorns ripe down pattering 
While the autumn breezes sing." 

" . . . islands that together lie 
As quietly as spots of sky 
Among the evening clouds." 

" We lay beneath a spreading oak, 
Beside a mossy seat ; 
And from the turf 'a fountain broke 
And gurgled at our feet." 

"Where the bee sucks, there suck I : 
In a cowslip' ] s bell I lie ; 
There I couch when owls do cry ; 
On the bat's back I do fly." 



1 68 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

/ 

" The oriole should faald and tell 

His love-tale close beside my cell; 

The idle butterfly 

Should rest him there, and there be heard 

The housewife bee and huimning-bird" 

After the various sensory images can be formed of separate 
objects, an effort should be made to construct a picture in 
which several elements form their due proportion. Some of 
Tennyson's poetry furnishes excellent material for this larger 
view. The writer has practised pupils to pass before their 
mind's eye and to describe orally a complete picture corre- 
sponding to such passages as these : 

" One seem'd all dark and red — a tract of sand, 
And some one pacing there alone, 
Who paced for ever in a glimmering land, 
Lit with a low large moon." 

When different pupils described the picture suggested to them 
by these lines, there was of course a difference because of 
varied experiences. One pupil said : " I see a broad sandy 
shore, sloping toward the south. The tide is low, and there is 
only a slight moaning of the waves. I face the south, and at 
my right are the dark red clouds of twilight ; at my left, the 
rising moon. I see in the gloom a figure wrapped in a black 
cloak, slowly pacing the sands. His head is bowed, and his 
arms are folded." Another pupil placed the scene in the 
desert, away from the ocean, and still another thought of a 
desolate moor. 

" One show'd an iron coast and angry waves. 
You seem'd to hear them climb and fall 
And roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves 
Beneath the windy wall." 



CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 1 69 

A pupil described this as an eastern coast with rocks rising 
a hundred feet from the water's edge. The sea had worn out 
a cavern under the rock, and the echoing sound of the waves 
can be heard as they dash in and are turned back. The waves 
are a blackish gray colour, tipped with foam as white as snow. 
Clouds are chasing each other across the sky. One pupil 
described the promontory of Marblehead, Massachusetts, and 
another, a rocky headland on the coast of Maine. 

" And one, a full-fed river winding slow 
By herds upon an endless plain, 
The ragged rims of thunder brooding low, 
With shadow-streaks of rain." 

This was described as "a river meandering toward the 
south. The pastures on either side are luxuriant with clover, 
buttercups, and daisies, rising to the cattle's knees. The kine 
have large bluish, dreamy eyes. Some of the cattle are yel- 
lowish brown or tawny with white throats and breasts. Others 
are pied ; that is, bluish black and white. Some are eating • 
others chewing the cud. There is a silvery tinkle of bells. 
About twenty-five degrees above the western horizon, there is 
a thunder cloud, blackish gray in colour. There are trailing 
mist-like streaks depending from this cloud to the earth." 

" A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand, 
Left on the shore ; that hears all night 
The plunging seas draw backward from the land 
Their moon-led waters white." 

A picture like this is a pure luxury only to those who can 
form definite visual and auditory images to correspond to such 
a scene. When such journey inland, they are never without 
the sight and sound of the sea. 



170 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

Wherever we turn in literature, we find objects to develop 
the imaging power. We open Browning, and see an image of 
a mountain in spring : 

" Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nest 
Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his 

crest." 

We pick up Izaak Walton and read : 

" But turn out of the way a little, good scholar, towards yonder 
high honeysuckle hedge ; there well sit and sing, whilst this shower 
falls so gently upon the teeming earth, and gives a yet sweeter smell 
to the lovely flowers that adorn these verdant meadows. 1 ' 

Perhaps the right kind of literature can in no way be made 
more serviceable than in developing the power of making 
images to correspond to the natural objects mentioned. The 
faces of pupils glow with pleasure when they have definite 
images wherewith to interpret what is read ; but a listless look 
soon spreads over the countenances of those who cannot sum- 
mon the fitting images. We must repeat, as we close this 
chapter, that the recall of images tends toward brain modifica- 
tion in the same manner as the original sensations. 



CHAPTER X 

How Shakspere's Senses were Trained 

" In Nature's infinite book of secrecy 

A little can I read." 

Antony and Cleopatra. 

" The bounteous huswife, nature, on each bush 

Lays her full mess before you." 

Timon of Athens. 

Not only in the case of art, architecture, and music, but also 
in all branches of human development, intellectual and moral, 
the study of models is very important. We ought to study the 
lives of the greatest men of all time, as examples and incen- 
tives ; the lives of commonplace individuals and of failures, as 
warnings. A great man, even a genius, is a product, an exem- 
plification of the laws of cause and effect. A genius does not 
introduce lawlessness into life ; he rather shows the most per- 
fect workings of law. 

Every one ought to know how Shakspere's senses were 
trained; for in his sensory experience is to be found the 
foundation of all those imperishable structures given to hu- 
manity by his heaven-climbing genius. Two things are true 
of Shakspere, — his senses had magnificent training ; the 
stimuli of nature also had in him a wonderful central nervous 
system to develop. We shall not reach his heights, but if we 
have the proper training, we shall ascend far higher than we 
could without it. If John Weakling can never make a Samson, 
that is no reason why John should not take proper gymnastic 

171 



172 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

exercise and develop his latent powers to the utmost. At 
their best they may be poor ; at their worst, they may keep 
him through life the slave of underlings. After going through 
sensory training similar to Shakspere's, any boy would be bet- 
ter fitted to cope with the world. 

Since so little is known of Shakspere's life, it may be asked 
how anything definite can be said of the way in which his senses 
were trained. The question is not so difficult as it might at 
first seem. There are persons who can take a finished shoe, 
piece of cloth, watch, or musical instrument, and tell the steps 
by which it was made. Shakspere has left a vast quantity of 
finished products. His mind worked according to psychologi- 
cal laws in constructing his dramas. What one sees himself 
is apt to impress him more vividly than what another tells him. 
The most vivid images come to our minds first; they sway 
most strongly the current of our association of ideas. We are 
more apt to talk and write about our own sensory experiences 
than what we have learned at second-hand. The psychologist 
can, therefore, trace many of Shakspere's expressions to their 
sensory source. For instance, when he says : 

"... daffodils 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty," 

the psychologist is sure that no such loving appreciation of the 
daffodils was voiced, unless his eyes had fallen on them in their 
own habitat on some March day, when he looked for the swal- 
low and found her not. 
Again, when he sings : 

"When daisies pied and violets blue 
And lady-smocks all silver-white 
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue 
Do paint the meadows with delight," 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 173 

we feel that he must have seen with appreciative eyes the 
daisies, violets, lady-smocks, and cuckoo-buds. When we 
find those same flowers in the meadows around Stratford, we 
are certain that we have found some of the things that de- 
veloped his senses. 

When he says of one of his characters : 

" Alas ! poor hurt fowl, now will he creep into sedges," 

we feel that in his walks or boyish hunts he had seen a 
wounded fowl try to hide itself in the sedges and feel its 
misery alone. 

When we find that many sensory objects which he mentions 
in his plays could have been seen by romping youth every year 
in incomparable Warwickshire, we may feel sure that they formed 
part of Shakspere's sensory experiences. Bayne correctly says : 
"We know, for example, that Shakspere was born and lived 
for twenty years at Stratford-upon-Avon ; and we can say 
therefore with certainty that all the physical and moral influ- 
ences of that picturesque and richly-storied Midland district 
melted as years went by into the full current of his ardent 
blood, became indeed the vital element, the very breath of life 
his expanding spirit breathed. We know a good deal about his 
home, his parents, and his domestic surroundings ; and these 
powerful factors in the development of any mind gifted with 
insight and sensibility must have acted with redoubled force on 
a nature so richly and harmoniously endowed as that of the 
Stratford poet. It would be difficult indeed to overestimate 
the combined effects of these vital elements on his capacious 
and retentive mind, a mind in which the receptive and crea- 
tive powers were so equally poised and of such unrivalled 
strength." 1 

1 Shakspere Studies. 



174 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

Antiquarians have traced out the source of the majority of 
Shakspere's plots. In the case of the remainder, the critics 
confidently expect some day to find the source, and their expe- 
rience during the last fifty years has fully justified this expecta- 
tion. When there are passages in his plays that appeal to 
direct sensory experience, it is equally sensible to endeavour 
to ascertain how and where he gained that experience. If we 
find its possible source in his environment in Stratford- on- Avon 
and the adjacent country, we ought to be as well satisfied as 
the critic who discovers in an old chronicler the suggestion 
for a play. It is surprising that so much more attention 
should have been given to the musty volumes in which Shak- 
spere found suggestions from books than to the objects of 
nature and of humanity that were his real educators. 

Before proceeding further, it will be wise to ascertain what 
Shakspere learned at school, and whether the Elizabethan 
age made the present mistake of confining children too 
much to books. We can then form a better idea of how 
much he owed to bookish training and how much to nature 
studies. 

Bayne 1 gives us a list of the books in use in the Free Gram- 
mar School of St. Bees in Cumberland, in 1583. They are 
as follows : 

The A B C in English. 

The Catechism in English, set forth by public authority. 

The Psalter, Book of Common Prayer, and the New Testament in 

English. 
The Queen's Grammar, with the Accidence. 
The Small Catechism in Latin, publicly authorized. 
Confabulationes Pueriles. 

1 " What Shakspere Learnt at School," Littell's Living Age, Vol. 145, 
p. 742. 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 1 75 



Prose • 



Verse ■ 



/Esoppi Fabulae. 

' Epistolae Minores Selectae. 
Officiorum. 
M. T. De Amicitia. 
Ciceronis De Senectute. 

Tusculanarum Questionum. 
I Orations, or any other of his works. 
Salustius. 
Justinius. 

Commentarii Cassaris. 
Q. Curtius. 

Distica Catonis. 

Terentius. 

Virgilius. 

Horatius. 

Ovidii Metamorphoses. 

Ovid : de Tristibus. 

B. Mantuanus. 

Palingenius. 

Buchanani Scripta. 

Sedulius. 

Prudentius. 



Of these, Bayne says : " This list, having been prepared on 
authority within five or six years after Shakspere left school, 
may be accepted as representing fairly enough the books and 
authors usually read in the country grammar schools. 

" From these various sources, contemporary and quasi-con- 
temporary, we may form a trustworthy general estimate of 
Shakspere's course of instruction during his school-days. 
At that time . . . boys usually went to the grammar school 
about six or at latest seven years of age, and entered at once 
upon the accidence. In his first year, therefore, Shakspere 
would be occupied with the accidence and grammar. In his 



176 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

second .year, with the elements of grammar, he would read 
some manual of short phrases and familiar dialogues, and 
these committed to memory would be colloquially employed 
in the work of the school ; in his third year, if not before, 
he would take up Cato's Maxims, and ^Esop's Fables; in 
his fourth, while continuing the Fables, he would read the 
Eclogues of Mantuanus, parts of Ovid, some of Cicero's 
Epistles, and probably one of his shorter treatises ; in 
his fifth year would continue the reading of Ovid's Meta- 
morphoses, with parts of Virgil and Terence ; and in the 
sixth, Horace, Plautus, and probably part of Juvenal, and 
Persius, with some of Cicero's Orations and Seneca's Tra- 
gedies" 

It is to be doubted whether any modern school could show 
a much worse list than this. Excepting the New Testament, 
which was probably not employed as a regular text-book, there 
are only two works on the list that are suited to children. 
^Esop's Fables would inspire a love of animal life and hence 
tend to sharpen the senses for observing its forms. Ovid's 
Metamorphoses would appeal to the imagination. These state- 
ments should, however, be qualified. These two would be good 
juvenile books, only in case they were properly studied. If 
pupils conned them as mere word gymnastics or parsing exer- 
cises, the conning did little good. No one was ever educated 
by studying words. Words are symbols that represent either 
definite sensory experiences, or ideas and feelings which have 
for their foundation such experiences. 

The writer once knew a teacher who was very fond of de- 
veloping fluency of expression in his pupils. This was a most 
laudable object, and had they been taught aright, their know- 
ledge of words would have progressed no faster than that of 
the sensations corresponding to them. He, however, required 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 1 77 

them to memorize a list of words indicative of different shades 
of colour : 

Lurid, pearly, ebon, tawny, dapple, maroon, amber, saffron, 
cerulean, sapphire, pied, etc. 

A class of thirty-five, that remembered these words as well 
as the declension of mensa, was asked to indicate some natural 
object of a lurid colour. Not a single pupil was able to do this. 
Many otherwise good teachers are to-day careless about making 
their pupils interpret such terms in the light of definite sensory 
experiences. 

In several of his plays Shakspere has given us a good idea of 
the way in which children were taught in his day. As he is 
the best authority on that subject, we quote from the Merry 
Wives of Windsor : 

" Mrs. Page. How now, Sir Hugh! no school to-day? 

Sir Hugh Evans. No ; Master Slender is let the boys leave to 
play. 

Mistress Quickly. Blessing of his heart! 

Mrs. Page. Sir Hugh, my husband says my son profits nothing 
in the world at his book. I pray you ask him some questions in his 
accidence. 

* ** * * * * * * ** 

Evans. William, how many numbers is in nouns ? 

William. Two. 

Quickly. Truly, I thought there had been one number more, 
because they say l Od's nouns.' 

Evans. Peace your tattlings ! What is « fair,' William ? 

William. Pulcher. 

Quickly. Polecats! there are fairer things than polecats, sure. 

Evans. You are a very simplicity 'oman: I pray you, peace. 
What is ' lapis,' William ? 

William. A stone. 

Evans. And what is ' a stone, 1 William ? 

N 



1^8 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

William. A pebble. 

Evans. No, it is ' lapis ' : I pray you, remember in your prain. 

William. Lapis. 

Evans. That is a good William. What is he, William, that does 
lend articles ? 

William. Articles are borrowed of the pronoun and be thus de- 
clined, Singulariter, nominativo, hie, haec, hoc. 

Evans. Nominativo, hig, hag, hog; pray you mark: genetivo, 
hujus. Well, what is your accusative case? 

William. Accusativo, hinc. 

Evans. I pray you have your remembrance, child ; accusativo, 
hung, hag, hog." 

We may smile at William, but we cannot help pitying him 
when we think that the majority of his book-learning was kin 
to this. In Love's Labour's Lost, we are shown adults mak- 
ing pedantic use of the wordy knowledge acquired in the 
schoolroom : 

u Holofernes. The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood, 
ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of 
caslo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven ; and anon falleth like a crab 
on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth. 

Nathaniel. Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly 
varied, like a scholar at the least : but, sir, I assure ye, it was a buck 
of the first head. 

Holofernes. Sir Nathaniel, haud credo. 

Dull. 'Twas not a haud credo ; 'twas a pricket. 

Holofernes. Most barbarous intimation : yet a kind of insinua- 
tion, as it were, in via, in way, of explication ; facere, as it were, 
replication, or, rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his inclination, 
after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, 
or rather, unlettered, or, ratherest, unconfirmed fashion, to insert 
again my haud credo for a deer. 

Dull. I said the deer was not a haud credo ; 'twas a pricket. 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 179 

Holof ernes. Twice — sod simplicity, bis coctus. O thou monster 
Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look ! 

Nathaniel. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in 
a book ; he hath not eat paper, as it were ; he hath not drunk ink. 



Moth. {Aside to Costard.} They have been at a great feast of 
languages and stolen the scraps. 

Costard. O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. 
I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word ; for thou art 
not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus." 

There are still some persons who think that Shakspere did 
not have a sufficient amount of book-learning to write his 
plays. We can safely maintain that if he had had much more 
of the current book-learning, he could never have written 
them. As we shall see later, he was rescued just in time from 
this "learning." It may be all very well to increase one's 
vocabulary by suddenly memorizing twenty new words or 
synonymous forms of expression, but if not a single new idea 
has been added to the mental store, the gain is doubtful. In 
reply to the question of Polonius, "What do you read, my 
lord ? " Shakspere makes his masterly inactive character reply, 

" Words, words, words." 

The master in his inmost soul must have felt the special apt- 
ness of this reply. 

In Love's Labour's Lost the pedantic Holofernes quotes 
from Mantuanus, an oft-read author. A school-teacher, a 
short time after Shakspere, selects this very passage to show 
how that Latin author was studied : 

" For afternoon lessons on Wednesdayes, let them make use 
of Mantuanus, which is a poet, both for style and matter, very- 
familiar and gratefull to children, and therefore read in most 



l8o EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

schooles. They may read over some of the Eclogues that 
are less offensive than the rest, takeing six lines at a lesson, 
which they should first commit to memory, as they are able. 
Secondly, construe, thirdly, parse. Then help them to pick 
out the phrases and sentences, which they may commit to a 
paper book ; and afterwards resolve the matter of their lessons 
into an English period or two, which they may turn into ele- 
gant and proper Latine, observing the placing of words accord- 
ing to prose." 

The fact that Mantuanus was extremely poor poetry mattered 
little. As in the case of many modern text-books, he furnished 
plenty of words, and they were sufficient. 

On account of his father's pecuniary difficulties, Shakspere 
probably left school shortly after passing his fourteenth birth- 
day. This was extremely fortunate. Had he not left school 
at that age, we might to-day be without the greatest dramas of 
all time. At any rate, those who favour going to school for 
the chief purpose of studying books, must acknowledge that 
earth's greatest writer did stop school at about the age of 
fourteen and yet surpassed even those who spent half their 
lives at school. 

We have investigated the books used in Shakspere's time 
and the manner of studying them sufficiently to be sure that 
he did not receive much sensory training at school. How 
was it, then, that Shakspere became the best-educated man 
of any age ? The answer is that he had magnificent sensory 
training and he made the proper motor responses thereto. 
Before we consider in detail how he received this training, 
we may quote a general statement from a man familiar with 
every foot of Shakspere's haunts : " His mind became a vast 
reservoir of facts and fancies, but the facts were not acquired 
nor were the fancies stimulated within the dingy walls of King 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED l8l 

Edward's Grammar School. The Stratford meadows, gay and 
bright with flowers from early springtime till late autumn ; the 
Wier Brake, where the earliest primroses come, and ' where 
the nightingales sing the night long ' ; the noble forest of 
Arden which stretched away through northwestern Warwick- 
shire, with its hunting scenes and woodland idyls j the Whit- 
suntide celebrations, the May-pole dances, the sheep-shearing 
festivals, and the mystery plays; and on the banks of the 
Avon, less than a dozen miles away, the noble castles of 
Warwick and Kenil worth, about which as a centre the history 
of England revolved for centuries — these are some of the 
places where Shakspere acquired his education. Let one 
roam about this beautiful country for a year or two and steep 
himself in the spirit of its history and traditions, and he will 
cease to wonder where the great poet gained his chief know- 
ledge of life and nature, or whether he was really the author 
of the writings attributed to him. The spirit of the Midland 
Counties breathes through his pages, and much of his work 
is only a poetically idealized picture of what his eyes actually 
beheld." 1 

Shakspere was also extremely fortunate in having parents 
who could neither read nor write. Both made their mark 
when it was necessary for them to sign documents. On Oc- 
tober 15, 1579, J onn an d Mary Shakspere, the parents of 
the poet, sold their interest in a piece of land at Snitterfield. 
The document is signed, " The marke + of John Shackspere. 
The marke + of Marye Shacksper." Halliwell-Phillipps says, 
" Both parents of the poet were absolutely illiterate." If we 
take "illiterate" in its etymological sense, i.e. without know- 
ledge of written or printed letters, the statement is probably 
correct. It is, however, probable that John and Mary Shak- 

1 Williams' Homes and Haunts of Shakspere, p. 13. 



1 82 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

spere were better educated than the average well-to-do inhab- 
itants of our best cities at the present day. This may sound 
strange to those who think that all knowledge necessarily comes 
from books. We can therefore be safe in assuming that the 
greater part of whatever information his parents had, came 
from the exercise of their own senses in the experience of life. 
Their senses would be the keener because they could not rely 
on books. It is an excellent thing for a child to associate with 
those who are acute observers, for their example reacts on him 
and makes him see more. Herein lies the reason why Shak- 
spere was fortunate in having intelligent parents who were not 
bookish. By force of example they taught him to rely largely 
on his senses for information. 

It is probably true that Mary Shakspere was as perfect a 
specimen of mother as the world ever produced, as great in 
motherhood as her son grew to be in the drama. Among 
seven daughters, Mary Arden was her father's favourite. She 
came of an illustrious Warwickshire family " of gentle birth and 
good breeding." She was probably the sympathetic teacher 
who guided her son's observing eyes. Her mental and moral 
traits became a part of him. We can safely conclude that 
some of his magnificent pictures of womanhood owed much 
to her. His early conception of womanhood, unconsciously 
gained from her, probably influenced him in drawing the char- 
acter of Perdita. When Mary Arden was a girl, she almost 
certainly performed the common domestic duties on her 
father's farm, and so she might, like Perdita, have been called 

" The queen of curds and cream." 

When he shows us Perdita speaking of the flowers as if she 
loved them like her own children, he may have been thinking 
of walks with his mother in the meadows around Stratford, 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 1 83 

when, for instance, she may have pointed out to his young 
eyes 

" The marigold, that goes to bed wi 1 the sun 

And with him rises weeping . . . 

. . . violets dim, 

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes. 11 

If a picture like this serves to incite any mother to cultivate 
her powers of observation so that she may be a true companion 
to her children in the most important period of their sensory 
development, she may have the satisfaction of knowing that 
she will thereby encourage them to walk in the paths which 
Shakspere trod. 

A consideration of the environment in which Shakspere 
was placed becomes very important in connection with his 
sensory development. Many a plant, animal, and human 
being have not developed fully because of lack of fitting 
environment. 

Nowhere in England could -Shakspere have found better en- 
vironment for sensory training than in the fields and forests 
that circled Stratford-on-Avon. There is a story of two Eng- 
lishmen laying a wager in regard to the finest walk in England. 
After the wagers had been deposited with the stake-holder, the 
one named the walk from Stratford-on-Avon to Coventry, and 
the other, from Coventry to Stratford-on-Avon. 

Some of the objects on which Shakspere's youthful eyes 
could have rested, are thus enumerated by Bayne : " Below the 
church, on the margin of the river, were the mill, the mill- 
bridge, and the weir, half-hidden by gray willows, green alders, 
and tall beds of rustling sedge. And beyond the church, the 
college, and the line of streets, ... the suburbs stretched 
away into gardens, orchards, meadows, and cultivated fields, 
divided by rustic lanes with mossy banks, flowering hedgerows. 



1 84 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

and luminous vistas of bewildering beauty. These cross and 
country roads were dotted at intervals with cottage homesteads, 
isolated farms, and the small groups of both which constituted 
the villages and hamlets included within the wide sweep of old 
Stratford parish. . . . The town was thus girdled in the spring 
by daisied meadows and blossoming orchards, and enriched 
during the later months by the orange and gold of harvest fields 
and autumn foliage, mingled with the coral and purple clusters 
of elder, hawthorn, and mountain ash, and, around the farms 
and cottages, with the glow of ripening fruit for the winter's 
store." 

A man who knows the Warwickshire Avon well, writes thus 
of it : " Perhaps the most interesting part of the Avon is the 
twenty miles of its course stretching from Kenilworth to Bidford 
— Kenilworth being some twelve miles above Stratford, and 
Bidford about eight miles below. It is this part of the river 
with which Shakspere was most familiar. Many months have 
been spent by the writer along its banks since that summer 
morning when, for the first time, he leaned over the parapets 
of Clopton Bridge and saw the white swans floating on its 
silvery surface. It has been a companion in all moods and 
seasons — in spring, when the tender green of the meadows is 
flecked with the white snow of the daisies ; in early summer, 
when its rippling surface dances in the sunshine, when the 
hawthorn hedges send out their exquisite perfume, and the 
watercourses are marked by great bunches of golden king- 
cups ; in the long midsummer evenings, when mystic shadows 
play about the thickets — 

" ' Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing 
Amongst the dainty, dew-impearled flowers ; ' 

and again in winter when the magic of the hoar-frost converts 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED I S$ 

every weed into a fairy wand and robes the meanest object 
with beauty." 1 

Shakspere gives an excellent description of Warwickshire 
in those lines in which Lear assigns to his eldest daughter 
Goneril her portion : 

" Of all these bounds, — even from this line to this, 
With shadowy forests and with champains rich'd, 
With pleasant rivers and wide-skirted meads, — 
We make thee lady. 1 ' 

Change of environment is an important factor in the cultiva- 
tion of the senses. Where the stimuli from natural objects are 
few, or where they are almost constantly the same, the nervous 
system becomes somewhat less responsive to them. The per- 
fumer is less keenly sensitive to odours in his own shop. The 
factory hand soon ceases to notice the din of the machinery, but 
any strange noise immediately arrests his attention. There 
were within easy walking distance of Stratford two farms where 
John and Mary Shakspere would have been welcome with their 
handsome boy. Each of these farms would have seemed al- 
most like fairyland to him, furnishing, as they would, a strik- 
ing contrast to the village. There are some of us who can 
remember the marvels which a short stay in the country 
afforded us. We were absorbed in what seemed wonders to 
our childish eyes : freshly laid eggs, the broods of chickens, 
ducklets mysteriously swimming on a deep pond where we 
dared not venture, the lambs with which we essayed to play, 
the geese which advanced in a threatening manner toward us, 
the calves, colts, and little pigs, at first almost snow-white, the 
wild berries, the orchard with its birds'-nests and fruits. One of 
these farms, where the brown-eyed William would have been 

1 Williams' Homes and Haunts of Shakspere, p. 66. 



1 86 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

welcome, was at Snitterfield, three and one-half miles north- 
east of Stratford. At this village with the unpoetical name, 
the future poet's paternal grandfather and Uncle Henry lived. 
Three miles to the northwest of Stratford was Wilmcote, where 
his mother's family, the Ardens, lived on a fine old farm. 

Williams thus speaks of a walk from Stratford to Snitterfield : 
"Just behind the Welcombe Hills which rise to the northwest 
of Stratford-on-Avon, dozes in its quiet little valley the old- 
world village of Snitterfield. The name is not poetical, but 
there dwelt the forefathers of one who, through his poetry, 
created the world anew. A leisurely walk of an hour and a 
half from Stratford one sunny afternoon in springtime, delayed 
somewhat by many wayside rambles to gather the old English 
wild flowers which in rich profusion ' carpeted all the way with 
joy,' at last led us down a hillside street, quite overhung with 
widespreading branches of noble oaks and elms, and so we 
came into the hamlet where once lived the ancestors of William 
Shakspere. It is a beautiful village of perhaps thirty or forty 
cottages, a few of which are old, but the most of them com- 
paratively modern, scattered over the hillside that bounds the 
eastern side of the valley. A softly flowing stream, crossed by 
fords and rustic foot-bridges, winds about through the meadows 
and cottages at the foot of the hill." 1 

It must be remembered that a slight change of environment 
means much more to a boy than to adults ; for the world and 
its mysteries must be explored by him bit by bit.. Many of us 
can recall the time when anything three miles away might have 
seemed in the heart of fairyland. Speaking of Shakspere's 
boyhood, Bayne says : " There were during .these years at least 
three of the forest farms where the poet's parents would be 
always welcome, and where the boy must have spent many a 
1 Williams' Homes and Haunts of Shakspere, p. 2. 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 1 87 

happy day amidst the freedom and delights of outdoor country 
life. At Snitterfield his grandfather would be proud enough of 
the curly-headed youngster with the fine hazel eyes, and his 
uncle Henry would be charmed at the boy's interest in all he 
saw and heard as he trotted with him through the byres and 
barns, the poultry-yard and steading, or, from a safe nook on 
the bushy margin of the pool, enjoyed the fun and excitement 
of sheep -washing, or later on watched the mysteries of the 
shearing and saw the heavy fleece fall from the sides of the 
palpitating victim before the sure and rapid furrowing of 
the shears. He would no doubt also be present at the shear- 
ing feast, and see the queen of the festival receive her rustic 
guests and distribute amongst them her floral gifts. At Wilm- 
cote in the solid oak-timbered dwelling of the Asbies, with its 
well-stocked garden and orchard, the boy would be received 
with cordial hospitality, as well as with the attention and re- 
spect due to his parents as the proprietors, and to himself as 
the heir of the maternal estate. At Shottery the welcome of 
the Shaksperes would not be less cordial or friendly, as there is 
evidence to show that as early as 1566 the families were known 
to each other, John Shakspere having in that year rendered 
Richard Hathaway an important personal service." 

A careful reading of Shakspere's plays will disclose many of 
the objects which served to sharpen his powers of observation. 
Whenever these objects were such as to be met with frequently 
in his Warwickshire environment, it is safe to assume that he 
knew them at first hand. It is true that he mentions things to 
be found only in a foreign land, but he was able to grasp 
these more clearly because his sense-knowledge was so wide. 
He could from a mere description assimilate these unseen 
things to what he had previously seen. Even he could inter- 
pret new things only in terms of his past experience. 



1 88 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

It will be interesting for us to select from his works some of 
the natural objects which he noticed. If we accustom our 
children, our pupils, or ourselves to observe these same objects, 
we may have the consciousness that we are following in Shak- 
spere's steps, trying to educate ourselves and those around us 
after his fashion. Patterson 1 says : " I was thus led to exam- 
ine the plays of Shakspere with respect to the notices of 
natural objects which they contain, and I soon found that these 
notices were much more numerous than I had expected. I 
transcribed the passages containing them, under the several 
heads which naturalists have adopted in their classifications, 
and found, to my surprise, that they occupied one hundred 
closely written pages of letter paper. Of these, twenty-two 
pages related to the mammalia ; sixteen to birds ; nine to rep- 
tiles and fishes ; two to shells and minerals ; nine to insects ; 
thirteen to trees, flowers, and fruits ; and twenty-nine to those 
ever-varying features which mark the progress of the seasons, 
or depict some of the countless phenomena of nature." 

It should be noticed that Shakspere never lugs in a reference 
to any natural object unless it is called for to illustrate a point 
or strengthen a passage. He never tries to show us how 
much he knows on any subject. Some modern poets have 
started out with the direct object of cataloguing nature and 
they have introduced more natural objects than he did. 
But he probably knew vast numbers that he never men- 
tioned, because the special turn of the play never called for 
them. 

We shall have space to quote only a few of the passages in 
which such objects are mentioned. We quote the passages 
because the objects thus seem more interesting in the setting 
which he gave them. 

1 Insects mentioned in Shakspere s Plays ; p. n. 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 1 89 

First, let us take insects, which were not too small to escape 
his observant eye. 

" She never told her love ; 
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, 
Feed on her damask cheek." 

Twelfth Night, II., 1. 

" Then for the third part of a minute, hence ; 
Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds. 1 ' 

Midsummer Night's Dream, II., 2. 

" Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong, 
Come not near our fairy queen. 

******* 

Weaving spiders, come not here ; 
Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence ! 
Beetles black, approach not near ; 
Worm nor snail, do no offence. 1 ' 

Midsu?nmer Night's Dream, II., 2. 

" Prince. Shall we be merry? 
Poms. As merry as crickets, my lad." 

Henry IV., Part I., Act II., 4. 

We can imagine with what exquisite pleasure Shakspere 
penned this line, because he was then recalling his boyhood 
pleasures : 

"Where the bee sucks, there suck I." 

"Monsieur Cobweb, good Monsieur, get your weapons in your 
hand, and kill me a red hipp'd humble-bee on the top of a thistle ; 
and, good Monsieur, bring me the honey-bag.'" 

Midsinnmer Night's Dream, IV., 1. 

" The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, 
And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs 
And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes, 



I90 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

To have my love to bed and to arise ; 

And pluck the wings from painted butterflies 

To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. 1 ' 

Midsummer Nighfs Dream, III., 1. 

In the reply of Bottom to Cobweb, Shakspere shows that he 
had learned the surgical uses of the product of the spider's 
loom : 

" Bottom. I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master 
Cobweb : if I cut my finger, I shall make bold with you." 

"... Thou shalt be pinch'd 
As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging 
Than bees that made 'em. 1 ' 

Tempest, I., 2. 

In this picture of a colony of bees Shakspere shows that he 
had carefully watched them : 

"... for so work the honey-bees, 
Creatures that, by a rule in nature, teach 
The act of order to a peopled kingdom. 
They have a king and officers of sorts : 
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home ; 
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad ; 
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, 
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds ; 
Which pillaged they with merry march bring home 
To the tent-royal of their emperor ; 
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys 
The singing masons building roofs of gold, 
The civil citizens kneading up the honey ; 
The poor mechanic porters crowding in 
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate." 

Henry V., I., 2. 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 191 

He thus constructs Queen Mab's carriage : 

" Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners 1 legs ; 
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers ; 
The traces, of the smallest spider's web ; 
The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams : 
Her whip, of cricket's bone : the lash, of film : 
Her waggoner, a small gray-coated gnat, 
Not half so big as a round little worm 
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid : 
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut, 
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub." 

Romeo and Juliet, I., 4. 

In Macbeth's speech before the murder of Duncan, Shak- 
spere shows that he had observed the accompaniments of the 
approach of darkness. 

"... ere the bat hath flown 
His cloister'd flight ; ere to black Hecate's summons 
The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums, 
Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done 
A deed of dreadful note." 

No doubt Shakspere recalled juvenile memories, when he 
had Petruchio ask : 

" Who knows not where a wasp doth wear his sting ? " 

In the beautiful meadows about Stratford, his own motor and 
sensory experiences might have prompted him to write : 

"... a very pretty boy. O' my troth, I looked upon him o' 
Wednesday half an hour together : has such a confirm'd counte- 
nance. I saw him run after a gilded butterfly ; and when he caught 
it, he let it go again : and after it again ; and over and over he 
comes, and up again ; catched it again." 

Coriolanus, I., 3. 



192 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

He had also noticed "wholesome herbs swarming with 
caterpillars." He distinguished accurately between the gilded 
fly, the blow fly, the gad fly, and the gnat. He had doubtless 
risen before light for some youthful excursion and first noticed 
the approach of twilight because the glow-worm began to shine 
less distinctly. In Titus Andronicus, III., 2, Shakspere shows 
us that his careful observation of insect life had taught him a 
lesson of kindness : 

"Marcus. Alas, my lord, I have but kilPd a fly. 
Titus. But how if that fly had a father and mother? 
How would he hang his slender gilded wings, 
And buzz lamenting doings in the air! 
Poor harmless fly! 

That, with his pretty buzzing melody, 
Came here to make us merry! and thou hast kill'd him." 

We have ample proof that flowers, both wild and domes- 
tic, furnished rich material for the training of Shakspere's 
senses. In proof of this statement, we have to read only 
the Winter's Tale and the Midsummer Nights Dream. 
We shall find these pages redolent with the breath of 
flowers. In fact, no finer poetry about the flowers can be 
found than the pages of the Winter's Tale contain. There 
are also others of his plays which are like spring meadows 
dotted with wild flowers. In this class we may mention 
the Tempest, Hamlet, Cymbeline, Romeo and Juliet, and 
Lear. 

We have already quoted in preceding pages some of the 
finest Shaksperian passages about flowers, and so it is not 
necessary to give a large number here. We can follow Shak- 
spere in his boyhood as he romped around the meadows and 
streams of Warwickshire, his brown eyes sparkling with delight 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 193 

while he looked on scenes which he recalled later in such lines 

as these : 

" I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, 
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, 
Quite over-canopi'd with luscious woodbine, 
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine." 

We find him regretting some spring which had evidently 
impressed him because the frost came late and killed the 
flowers. 

"... hoary-headed frosts 
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose, 
And on old Hiem's thin and icy crown 
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds 
Is, as in mockery set." 

We find him singing in lines that seem to overflow with joy : 

" Merrily, merrily shall I live now 
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough." 

From such a passage as this, written probably in London, 
with the Stratford fields uppermost in memory, one might infer 
where Shakspere loved to tumble, when a boy : 

"... Give me swift transportation to those fields 
Where I may wallow in the lily beds." 

And again : 

"In the woods where often you and I 
Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie." 

When the troubles of manhood came, we find him hopefully 
speculating that 

"... the time will bring on summer, 
When briars shall have leaves as well as thorns, 
And be as sweet as sharp." 
o 



194 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

" Their lips were four red roses on one stalk, 
Which in their summer beauty kissed each other." 

" So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not 
To those fresh morning drops upon the rose. 1 ' 

The violet was a great favourite with Shakspere. We have 
a beautiful wish about Ophelia : 

" And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
May violets spring. 1 ' 

"... The south wind 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing and giving odour." 

As we follow Shakspere, we walk through meadows and by 
the side of streams. Noticing the direction of his sympathetic 
glance, our eyes rest on pale primroses, weeping marigolds, 
daffodils that come before the swallow, bold oxlips, cowslips 
adorned with pearls by fairy hands, the pied daisy, the violet 
that has taken its gentle colour from the heavens and its odour 
from a sweeter source than the breath of the goddess of Love, 
the azured harebell, the honeysuckle, fragrant rosemary, rue, 
and lavender, the pansy to move the stream of thought. As 
we look at these carefully with sympathetic eyes, we may know 
that we are cultivating our senses on the same material that 
nature gave to her greatest child for that purpose. 

A point well worth noticing is that his flowers, with but very 
few exceptions, are those of the spring. This fact shows that 
contrast and a change in environment quicken the senses. The 
spring flowers are much more noticeable because they present 
such a striking contrast to the barrenness of winter. The 
senses finally become surfeited with the profusion of flowers 
and vegetation, and the attention is less strongly attracted in 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 1 95 

their direction. The fact that Shakspere lived in a village 
helped, however, to make a tramp into the country seem more 
novel than if he had spent all his time on a farm. Ruskin 
ascribed his own great love for the beauties of nature largely 
to his having been born in London. When he saw the coun- 
try as a boy, it seemed to him an Eden in contrast with smoky 
London. We must remember that contrast is one of the most 
potent causes of attention. A stage whisper following a loud 
tone, a sour taste succeeding a sweet one, the charm of the 
country to a city child, the buds and blossoms of spring when 
they first clothe the barren branches, claim a special hold on 
the attention. This truth is emphasized by one of Shakspere's 
lines relating to a spring flower : 

" Showed like April daisy on the grass. 1 ' 

When we come to compare Shakspere's flowers with those 
of Milton, we see how much more accurate was the dramatist's 
knowledge. A part of this superiority was of course due to 
Shakspere's greater genius, but a part must also be ascribed 
to the fact that his senses were trained earlier than those of 
Milton. The Puritan poet was born in London, and he did 
not go to live amid the fine scenery at Horton until after he 
had graduated from college. At this time his senses had in 
great part lost their early plasticity. A botanist, commenting 
on Milton's mistakes, says : " The violet is not a ' glowing ' 
flower j wild thyme does not mingle with the ' gadding vine ' ; 
nor does the jessamine ' rear high its flourished head.' " 

Botanists have found but one error in Shakspere's descrip- 
tion of flowers. This occurs in Cymbeline, in the passage : 

" A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops 
V the bottom of a cowslip." 



196 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

The spots in the bottom of a cowslip can scarcely be called 
crimson, although they might appear so to a painter of the 
impressionistic school, and Shakspere may have looked at them 
when he felt impressionistic. This one exception, however, 
may serve to emphasize more deeply the truth that he was" 
a man of accurate, as well as of wide, observation. 

A forest has generally a mysterious fascination for most boys. 
In the case of Shakspere, we may say that no natural objects 
impressed his senses more strongly than the life of the forest. 
Luckily, his environment afforded plenty of noble forests within 
easy distance of Stratford. Bayne says : " In the second half 
of the sixteenth century, however, the Arden district still re- 
tained enough of its primitive character to fill the poet's imagi- 
nation with the exhilarating breadth and sweetness of woodland 
haunts, the beauty, variety, and freedom of sylvan life, and thus 
to impart to the scenery of As You Like It the vivid freshness 
and reality of a living experience. In this delightful comedy 
the details of forest life are touched with so light, but at the 
same time, so sure a hand, as to prove the writer's familiarity 
with the whole art of venery, his thorough knowledge of that 
' highest franchise of noble and princely pleasure ' which the 
royal demesnes of wood and park afforded. In referring to 
the marches or wide margins on the outskirts of the forest, 
legally known as purlieus, Shakspere, indeed, displays a minute 
technical accuracy which would seem to indicate that in his 
early rambles about the forest and talks with its keepers and 
woodmen, he had picked up the legal incidents of sylvan 
economy, as well as enjoyed the freedom and charm of forest 
life. . . . 

" Not only in As You Like It but in Love's Labour's Lost, 
in Midsummer Nights Dream, in the Merry Wives of Wind- 
sor, and indeed throughout his dramatic works, Shakspere 



V 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 1 97 

displays the most intimate knowledge of the aspects and inci- 
dents of forest life ; and it is certain that in the first instance 
this knowledge must have been gained from his early famili- 
arity with the Arden district. This, as we have seen, stretched 
to the north of Stratford in all its amplitude and variety of 
hill and dale, leafy covert and sunny glade, giant oaks and 
tangled thickets — the woodland stillness being broken at 
intervals not only by the noise of brawling brooks below and 
of feathered outcries and flutterings overhead, but by dappled 
herds sweeping across the open lawns or twinkling in the 
shadowy bracken, as well as by scattered groups of timid 
conies feeding, at matins and vespers, on the tender shoots 
and sweet herbage of the forest side. The deer-stealing tradi- 
tion is sufficient evidence of the popular belief in the poet's 
love of daring exploits in the regions of vert and venison, and 
of his devotion, although in a somewhat irregular way perhaps, 
to the attractive woodcraft of the park, the warren, and the 
chase." 

In As You Like It, Shakspere has mentioned a few of the 
text-books from which he learned most : 

"And this our life exempt from public haunt, 
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones and good in everything. 
I would not change it." 

The rustics in the Midsummer Nighfs Dream rehearsed 
their play in a spot perhaps similar to the one selected by the 
youthful Shakspere and the other boys of Stratford for their 
imitation of plays given by the strolling actors : 

" . . . here's a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal. 
This green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn-brake our tiring- 
house." 



198 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

Passages like the following show his minute perception of 
forest minutiae : 

" Under an oak whose antique root peeps out 
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood." 

" . . .an oak, whose boughs were moss'd with age 
And high top bald with dry antiquity." 

" Oliver. Where in the purlieus of this forest stands 
A sheep-cote fenced about with olive trees? 

Celia. "West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom. 
The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream, 
Left on your right hand brings you to the place." 

"... Kate, like the hazel twig, 
Is straight and slender ; and as brown in hue 
As hazel nuts, and sweeter than the kernels." 

" . . . In such a night as this, 
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, 
And they did make no noise." 

By his references to them, Shakspere shows us that he had 
noted the myrtle, the willow growing "ascaunt the brook," the 
yew, aspen, hawthorn, box tree, birch, ash, elm, elder, syca- 
more, as well as the forms of forest life that ran its course 
under their boughs. 

It was in the forest that Shakspere became acquainted with 
"the joiner squirrel," the subtle fox, the timorous hare, the 
"dormouse of little valour," and the deer. Harting says of 
him : " The knowledge which he displays of our wild animals, 
as the fox, the badger, the weasel, and the wild-cat, could only 
have been acquired by one accustomed to much observation 
by flood and field." Shakspere would naturally have become 
a hunter quite young, and as such he would have found it nec- 
essary to notice carefully the habits of the denizens of the for- 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 1 99 

est and the field. His descriptions of the hounds in the fourth 
act of the Midsummer Night 1 s Dream, and of the wounded 
deer in the second act of As You Like It, are such as could 
scarcely have been written by any one who had not carefully 
observed those animals. 

Boys are generally much attracted by birds. Children under 
the age of ten often say that they would like to become birds. 
In the first place, a moving object naturally attracts a child, 
arid then the child can scarcely help coveting, the freedom of 
movement, the power to hop at ease among the branches, or to 
fly over ponds and marshes. ^ It is fortunate if me environment 
of children contains many different kinds of birds. The inter- 
mingling of forest, stream, and cleared land in Warwickshire 
made it a favourite haunt for birds. 

Shakspere's plays are especially rich in mention of birds. 
We can see that he observed them from many different points 
of view. From certain lines, we may infer that he was familiar 
with the nests of the kite, the wren, the martin, the raven, and 
the jay. Birds' nests and eggs are usually objects of admiring 
wonder to a boy, and it is probable that Shakspere would have 
felt curiosity enough to search for them. A line in the Winter's 

Tale, 

" When the kite builds, look to lesser linen," 

shows that he was familiar with some of the characteristics of 
that bird in building its nest. The shadow of a hawk or eagle 
floating over the branches or the ground will instantly still the 
songsters and put the barn-yard fowl to flight. He shows in 
these lines that this fact had not escaped him : 

" The eagle suffers little birds to sing, 
And is not careful what they mean thereby, 
Knowing that with the shadow of his wing 
He can at pleasure stint their melody." 



200 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

The birds of prey and their various habits are mentioned 
again and again. The vulture, osprey, kite, buzzard, crow, and 
various kinds of hawks come in for their full share of atten- 
tion. The sport of hawking had evidently served to quicken 
his powers of observation. He uses, in connection with this 
sport, terms that only an expert in the art could have under- 
stood. 

Expressions like the following show that Shakspere was up 
betimes, and that he had an eye for feathered life : 

"... The busy day 
Wak'd by the lark, hath rous'd the ribald crows." 

He had evidently noticed the ugly eyes of the lark and the 
beautiful ones of the toad, for he makes Juliet say : 

" Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes." 

In the Midsummer Nights Dream our attention is called to 
several birds in Bottom's song. It would be excellent training 
for the powers of observation to describe the shape, plumage, 
song, and habits of each of these accurately : 

" The ousel cock [blackbird] so black of hue, 
With orange-tawny bill, 
The throstle with his note so true, 
The wren with little quill, 
The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, 
The plain-song cuckoo gray." 

After he had caught certain birds, he noticed the behaviour 
of the little captives : 

" She fetches her breath so short as a new-ta'en sparrow." 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 201 

He shows that he had compared the jay and the lark, when 
he asks the question : 

" What, is the jay more precious than the lark 
Because his feathers are more beautiful ? " 

The early superiority in movement of the young of animals 
over those of the human species had attracted his attention. 
He tells us that 

" The lapwing runs away with the shell on his head." 

We can imagine the boyish wonder of Shakspere when he 
saw 

" Strange fowl light upon neighbouring ponds," 

and how he would watch them, notice what they ate, and try 
many devices for securing them. 

Domestic fowl also served as material for the cultivation of 
his senses. He has written about the cock, peacock, goose, 
duck, turkey, swan, pigeon. While sitting in London writing 
the Te?npest, he could recall vivid youthful memories of the 
merry matin call of the cock : 

" Hark ! hark ! I hear 
The strain of strutting chanticleer 
Cry, Cockadiddle-dowe." 

In the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakspere has one of his 
characters speak of geese and of his dog in a way that would 
indicate real experience along the lines suggested : 

" I have stood in the pillory for geese that he hath killed, other- 
wise he had suffered for 't." 



202 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

From the following expression, one might imagine that 
Shakspere had tried to capture wild geese : 

"Nay, if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done." 

It would be interesting to know the number of boys who 
had actually seen swans, and who could be positive about the 
colour of their legs. Shakspere shows that he remembered 
such things : 

" For all the water in the ocean 
Can never turn a swan's black legs to white, 
Although she lave them hourly in the flood." 

In connection with birds, Shakspere nowhere shows more 
exact and sympathetic powers of observation than in speaking 
of the martin or " martlet " : 

" This guest of summer, 
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve 
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath 
Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze, 
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird 
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : 
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, 
The air is delicate." 

We may mention these as some of the birds that served as 
material for the cultivation of Shakspere's senses : 

The cuckoo, lark, bunting, chough, owl, crow, dove, eagle, 
vulture, raven, pheasant, jay, swallow, kite, thrush, robin, wood- 
cock, daw, wren, quail, sparrow, cygnet, buzzard, goose, night- 
ingale, snipe, duck, lapwing, finch, blackbird, martin, pigeon, 
rook, hawk, hen, starling, cock, mallard, and osprey. 

It will afford excellent sense training to imitate Shakspere 
in learning all we can about as many of these birds as our 
environment will enable us to see. 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 203 

He had noticed the fruits, both wild and domestic. A boy's 
keen appetite would be sure to sharpen his senses in that 
direction. A gentleman recently said that the keenest delight 
he ever knew was when hunting for luscious wild strawberries, 
yet cool with the morning dew, on a fragrant day in June in 
New England. We find a line in Shakspere which shows us 
where his youthful brown eyes had rested : 

"The strawberry grows underneath the nettle." 

In his pages we catch glimpses of dewberries, mulberries, 
purple wild grapes, blackberries, cherries, and other fruits 
that make our mouths water. 

When the youthful poet roamed around the forest farms of 
his relatives at Snitterfield or Wilmcote, the common weeds 
did not escape him. To a child whose senses are well- 
trained, as well as to a great man, no natural object is common 
or mean. In a passage where King Lear's madness is graphi- 
cally portrayed, he is represented as 

" Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds, 
With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, 
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow 
In our sustaining corn." 

Shakspere has vividly described the land of the thriftless 
farmer, such as he might perhaps have seen in the vicinity 
of his paternal grandfather's place : 

" • • • her fallow leas 
The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory 
Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts 
That should deracinate such savagery ; 
The even mead that erst brought sweetly forth 
The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, 



204 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, 

Conceives by idleness and nothing teems 

But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs." 

The phenomena of inanimate nature, always more beautiful 
and varied in the country, left their impress upon his youth- 
ful sensory tracts. Rising early on a dubious morning, he 

noticed 

"... what envious streaks 
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east : 
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops." 

He also speaks of 

"... a red morn, that ever yet betoken'd 
Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field, 
Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds, 
Gusts and foul flaw to herdmen and to herds." 

In like vein we have 

" How bloodily the sun begins to peer 
Above yon busky hill ! the day looks pale 
At his distemperature." 

" Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, 
Kissing with golden face the meadows green, 
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy." 

" But look, the morn in russet mantle clad, 
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill." 

The phenomena of sunset also caught his eye : 
" Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west, 
Witnessing storms to come." 

And, again, 

" The weary sun hath made a golden set." 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 205 

Even the winds brought him material wherewith to cultivate 
his senses : 

" The southern, wind 
Doth play the trumpet to his purposes, 
And by his hollow whistling in the leaves 
Foretells a tempest and a blustering day." 

An over- enthusiastic lover is said to be 

" Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain." 

Although Shakspere received fine sense training from the 
field, the forest, and the sky, his genius must have made him 
instinctively know that this was incomplete. There is to-day 
the tendency to train the senses almost exclusively on natural 
objects. The flower, leaf, bird, insect, and sky ought always to 
be included in the list of text-books for sensory training, but 
Shakspere's example ought to emphasize to us the fact that 
these are not all. Human beings of almost every occupation 
were observed with keen interest by Shakspere in his boyhood. 
Had he not supplemented the training due to natural objects 
by watching his own kind as carefully as he noted the " strange 
fowl " alighting on "neighbouring ponds," we should not to-day 
have his dramas. The rascal Autolycus and the alewife Mistress 
Quickly demanded as keen observation as the violets or the 
temple-haunting martlet. In no respect does Shakspere tower 
above the rest of humanity more than in his careful observa- 
tion of all classes of men in every mood. 

For good opportunities to study- different types of human 
beings, a village is in some respects distinctly superior to either 
the city or the country. A person may live in a city without 
knowing anything of those dwelling on the next street, or, 
indeed, much of those who live next door. In a village, one 



206 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

may know considerable about almost every one else. A chance 
to watch people at their different occupations is of great im- 
portance for children. The village blacksmith shop or mill has 
been no mean factor in cultivating the senses of many a child. 
In a village, people live on more of an equality. The merchant, 
the blacksmith, the squire, and the miller may all sit near each 
other at church, or stroll down street together, discussing some 
village event. Their children grow up in the same way, and, 
in consequence, they have a chance for a wider and more 
intimate acquaintanceship with human beings. An aristocratic 
city child rarely ventures into a blacksmith shop. He will 
therefore lack that broad human sympathy which is necessary 
to quicken the powers of observation. 

When Shakspere was born, Stratford- on- Avon had the free 
and easy life of a country town. All classes of human beings, 
from the nobleman to the weaver, from the justice to the 
cobbler, could be seen, and in most cases, freely spoken to on 
the streets or at the public houses of the village. A critic has 
well said : "To Shakspere all aspects of life, even the humblest, 
had points of contact with his own. He could talk simply and 
naturally without a touch of patronage or condescension to a hod- 
man on his ladder, a costermonger at his stall, the tailor on his 
board, the cobbler in his combe, the hen-wife in her poultry 
yard, the ploughman in his furrow, or the base mechanicals at 
the wayside country inn." 

If, after leaving school, he helped attend to his father's store, 
the future poet would have had a rare chance for observing 
different classes of human beings. His plays show that he did 
not neglect the chance ; for we may there find drawn with a sure 
hand the peddler, cobbler, smith, musician, strolling player, 
soldier, apothecary, alewife, porter, gardener, tinker, clown, 
shepherd, grave-digger, sexton, merchant, doctor, justice, par- 



HOW SHAKSPERE'S SENSES WERE TRAINED 207 

son, tailor, carpenter, and many others. Such lines as these 
show how carefully he had watched them : 

" I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, 
The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, 
With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news ; 
Who, with his shears and measure in his hand, 
Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste 
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet." 

The itinerant peddler and his wares are well- described in 
the Winter's Tale, as are also the customs at a sheep-shearing 
festival, a holiday to which a boy was certain to look forward 
with great expectancy. In The Taming of the Shrew, we get 
an excellent picture of the life and habits of a tinker : 

"Am not I Christopher Sly, old Sly's son of Burton-heath, by 
birth a peddler, by education a card maker, by transmutation a bear- 
herd, and now by present profession a tinker. Ask Marian Hacket, 
the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know me not : if she say I am not 
fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying- 
est knave in Christendom." 

The sense training which Shakspere received from watching 
his own kind broadened his sympathies and made him feel that 
all men were brothers. This enabled him practically to realize 
the poetical truth that "utter knowledge is but utter love." 
He is never found sneering at the lowest menial. Few of his 
portraits are more worthy of admiration than that of the old 
servant Adam in As You Like It. 

Well-to-do city children of the present time are frequently 
taught to avoid workmen and their children. The young aris- 
tocrat thus acquires a contempt for handicraftsmen and their 
various arts, which appeal so strongly to the senses. His 
powers of observation will never be broadly trained, for no one 



208 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

can become a good observer in a direction where he has no 
sympathy. In A Midsummer Nights Dream, Shakspere has 
in the person of King Theseus taught all a lesson in this direc- 
tion. A bellows-mender, tinker, tailor, joiner, carpenter, and 
weaver had in the rudest fashion rehearsed a play which they 
wished to present at the royal nuptials : 

" Theseus. What are they that do play it ? 

Philostrate. Hard-handed men that work in Athens here, 
Which never labour'd in their minds till now, 
And now have toiPd their unbreathed memories 
With this same play against your nuptial. 

Theseus. And we will hear it. 

Philostrate. No, my noble lord, 
It is not for you ; I have heard it over, 
And it is nothing, nothing in the world. 

Theseus. I will hear that play ; 
For never anything can be amiss, 
When simpleness and duty tender it." 

And so Shakspere has taught us that broad sympathy must 
be cultivated in order to make any one a good observer. 

From a study of Shakspere's environment and his plays, 
we have learned what stimuli played upon his sensory brain 
tracts, and what ones made the deepest impression. We can 
do no better than to train the senses of the young with these 
very stimuli, or with so many of them as the environment will 
furnish. It is true that such training will not make Shak- 
speres, but it will vastly improve those who receive it. A study 
of mathematics will not make Newtons out of all pupils, but 
it will render them more capable in the battle of life. Such a 
training of the senses as Shakspere received will go far toward 
bringing in the golden age of education. 



CHAPTER XI 
Motor Training 

Sensations exist for the specific purpose of inciting us to 
action, either immediate or remote. If they fail to initiate the 
proper action, their failure is absolute. Even in so simple a 
case as sitting down to dinner, if the sensations due to seeing 
and smelling the viands on our plates do not lead to motor 
action, we should finally starve. When our barbaric progeni- 
tors saw edible wild fruit, they plucked and ate it. A question 
is asked us, and the sensation of sound acts upon the motor 
speech region, leading to a reply to the question. We touch 
an acid or a hot substance, and withdraw our hands to escape 
serious harm. When newsboys see a handful of pennies 
thrown among them, the sensation results in immediate scram- 
bling for the coins. Life in an analogous way exposes good 
things to our sight. It is not enough for us to see them, we 
must act in a way best suited to get them. The man of action 
bears away the prizes of life. It must not be forgotten that 
human actions are possible only because nerve cells are capa- 
ble of undergoing certain modifications, that the product of a 
sensation affects a motor centre, and action results in terms of 
the original capacity and subsequent habituation of that centre. 

When a sensation first pours into an infant's brain, certain 
cells are set in action. With this action comes development 
of connective nerve fibres. Motor connections are thus de- 
veloped and rendered stable. We have already seen that 
p 209 



2IO EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

there is an increase in the number of tangential nerve fibres 
up to the age of thirty-three. (See p. 56.) We cannot watch 
a growing brain with a microscope, and we are, therefore, in 
ignorance of the precise way in which these associative fibres 
develop. We do, however, know that such fibres are merely 
outgrowths of cells. It is highly probable that the develop- 
ment takes place in the following manner : Exercise causes 
more blood laden with nutritive elements to flow to the cells. 
This increased nutrition demands an outlet, which can be 
furnished in several ways ; first, by growth in the cell proper ; 
second, by the growth of nerve fibres, and third, by the exci- 
tation and propagation of motor action along these fibres after 
they are developed. When a tree is planted in rich soil, a 
part of the nutriment goes to develop the branches, but an 
equally important part is expended in growing new roots and 
rootlets. If the tree is exercised by severe winds, the roots 
strike deeper into the soil. We shall probably do no violence 
to brain development by holding that an analogous process 
takes place there. As the cells are exercised and draw more 
nutritive blood to them, not only may the cellular modification 
become more complex, without striking increase in their size, 
but connective fibres may also grow out from them like roots 
from a tree. 

Brain exercise of all kinds is accompanied with motor ele- 
ments. Physics teaches that no force is ever lost ; its direction 
may be changed ; it may be resolved into half a dozen different 
paths instead of flowing on in a straight line. When a sensa- 
tion pours into a nerve cell, the energy from this sensorial 
stream is not swallowed up and lost. A part of this energy is 
absorbed in modifying the cell, and a part tends to flow out in 
motor action. A sensation, which gave rise to no motor ele- 
ment, was never experienced. This element may be very 



MOTOR TRAINING 211 

small in connection with some sensations, but it exists. A 
mistake is often made in thinking that motor action is devel- 
oped only when an intense sensation is felt, as when some one 
treads on our toes. When a baby sees a bright object and 
reaches for it, or when a man sees a lamp-post and avoids it, 
we have examples of a part of the sensory energy, communi- 
cated to the brain cells, taking a motor direction and influ- 
encing the muscles. 

If the proper associative nerve fibres in the brain are not 
developed by fitting nurture and training, there must be both 
motor and sensory deficiency. When we see a flying bird, 
raise our guns, and shoot it ; when we see various piano keys 
and dextrously touch them ; when the soldier hears a command 
from his drill master, and replies with the fitting muscular 
movements, — it is plain that there must be connection be- 
tween the various sensory and motor nerve cells. If such was 
not the case, the appropriate movement would not be forth- 
coming. Strictly speaking, one can study neither sensory nor 
motor action by itself, for every sensation has its motor accom- 
paniment. 

The truth that sensation tends to pass into movement shows 
us that the foundation for motor development lies in sensory 
training. Where post-mortem examination has shown a defi- 
ciency in any sensory tract due to the early loss of any sense, 
there has also been a deficiency in the number of fibres leading 
from this tract. We can therefore give as a practical rule : See 
that the sensory cells have the proper stimuli pouring into 
them, then immediately act on the motor prompting, if the 
suggested action is not an unwise one. Some of us have actu- 
ally experimented with young children in two different kinds 
of environment ; first, where the sensory promptings were poor, 
and, secondly, where they were rich and varied. For instance, 



212 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

a child in the back yard of a city house will act for the most 
part only in so far as prompted by internal muscular sensations. 
Place the same child in a meadow. A buttercup strikes his 
eye and he runs to pluck it. Perhaps he next sees a daisy and 
gathers that. A butterfly flits by and he chases it. When 
tired, he lies down, and the fatigued cells are built up stronger 
than before as a result of the exercise and increased absorption 
of nutriment. The point should be noted that the environment 
in the back yard and in the meadow differs in the fact that the 
one furnishes scarcely any external sensations to prompt move- 
ment, while the other is rich in such suggestions. 

Many a city child has not developed into a man of pro- 
nounced action, because his early environment presented but 
few sensory promptings. Perhaps he was educated under his 
mother's eye and allowed to play but little with other children. 
When in the latter part of his teens, he finally goes into a large 
school or a college, he has no disposition to engage in games 
that call for much action or decision. Of course a disposition 
to action, or the opposite, is partially a matter of heredity, but 
we must not forget that many develop their natural powers 
very imperfectly. On precisely the same tract of land, one 
farmer will often raise twice as much as another. 

That must always remain an inferior brain where the fitting 
motor reactions do not follow sensations, original or revived in 
the form of memory images. In every walk of life we see 
dreamers who are content with the revived shadows of sensa- 
tions, men who have so far as possible divorced ideas from the 
suggested actions. 

Before we can proceed further, we must understand what 
is meant by an idea or image. The definition of an object of 
memory as the " shadow of a sensation " is not strictly correct, 
but the figure is forcible enough to impress on us vividly a not 



MOTOR TRAINING 21 3 

uncommon characteristic of such objects. In preceding chap- 
ters we have striven to show that training should be such as to 
eliminate as far as possible this indefinite, shadowy characteris- 
tic of recalled sense objects. It is, however, sometimes wise 
to define things as we most often find them, and not as we 
fancy they ought to be. 

We can gain the clearest idea of an object of memory from 
a study of the physiological processes involved. We glance at 
a rose, and the stimulus from it sets brain cells in action. We 
close our eyes and image this rose. There is then less intense 
action in these same cells. It is possible that these cells might 
be roused to such intense action in the absence of the rose, 
that we might be sure we saw it. This is precisely what hap- 
pens in an illusion. Some internal cause then stimulates the 
brain to as great activity as if sensations from actual objects 
were pouring into the cells. The line of demarcation by which 
we judge between a remembered and a present object is thus 
sometimes obliterated, and we can then, of course, not distin- 
guish between them. There are few of us who have not at 
some time or other had similar experiences. Most of us can 
recall how absolutely sure we were that we had recently seen a 
certain thing in a certain place, when all we had experienced 
was an extremely vivid recall of the object in that place. Men 
of irreproachable morals have testified on oath to seeing some- 
thing at a certain place at a given time, because brain cells 
have been set in intense action in the process of remembering. 
Most of us have been sure that we have done a certain thing, 
when we have not, put something in its place, when we act- 
ually left it lying out of its proper position, merely because we 
threw so much energy into the idea of performing the action, 
that we can actually seem to recall having done it. 1 

1 See Halleck's Psychology a?id Psychic Culture, pp. 108, 109. 



214 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

When an image is formed, a part of the activity in the cor- 
related brain cells tends to flow out in motor action. We have 
already seen that the natural tendency of a sensation is to 
cause motor action. Since an image is a revived sensation, 
usually less intense than the original, we can the better under- 
stand why images should have motor accompaniments and 
also why these should be less strong than those resulting 
from a direct sensation. Imagine eating a peach or some 
luscious fruit, and you will notice, if the image is vivid, that 
the glands of the mouth are affected. If we had an instru- 
ment sufficiently fine, we should probably also find incipient 
muscular movement in the muscles of the tongue and jaws. 
If we form an image of a lofty mountain, there will be move- 
ment in the delicate muscles controlling the eye. If we image 
the odour of a honeysuckle, there will be movement in the 
muscles controlling inhalation. Sensations from this muscular 
movement will be reflected to the brain and will make the 
odour image more vivid. No image can be formed without 
causing a more or less intense motor outflow. What we 
have before said concerning the cultivation of sensory tracts 
by forming images of sense objects applies also to the culti- 
vation of motor tracts, since a sensory stimulus means a motor 
outflow. The fact that such movements initiated by this out- 
flow are often promptly checked, does not disprove the exist- 
ence of a sensory cause. We often prevent the usual effect 
which results from a cause by introducing a counter cause. 
In the same way, the will often inhibits the movement which 
would naturally follow a sensation. I see a pear on a tree 
which is not mine. The motor tendency is to pluck and eat. 
I restrain this tendency by an act of will, which develops a 
counter idea. 

Recent psychology has done some of its best work in de- 



MOTOR TRAINING 



215 



monstrating the existence of a motor element in every act of 
memory as well as in every sensation. 

Thus, Kiilpe says : " Movements are everywhere important. 
It is perhaps not too much to say that a voluntary recollection 
never takes place without their assistance. When we think of 
intense cold, our body is thrown into tremulous movement, as 
in shivering; when we imagine an extent of space, our eyes 
move as they would in surveying it ; when we recall a rhythm, 
we mark its rise and fall with hand or foot." 1 

We may further say that all states of consciousness contain 
a motor element. From the moment the first sensation is ex- 
perienced until approaching dissolution snuffs out the last 
spark of consciousness, there is a motor element constantly 
accompanying it. If it was not for this, consciousness would 
be unprogressive, even stagnant. There could be no associa- 
tion of ideas. One changeless idea would remain before the 
mind for all life. Because of this motor element, one idea 
leads to another, and the mind, instead of being like a stag- 
nant pond, resembles a running brook. 

It may be asked why we speak of motor ideas any more 
than of wet water, if every sensation and every memorial 
image have a motor element. The answer is that ideas differ 
in the proportion in which this motor factor stands to other 
elements. The consciousness of different people differs in 
regard to the motor element as much as two brooks differ in 
the rapidity of their current. It may take some persons a 
quarter of an hour to grasp what another sees in a momentary 
glance. The extent of the mental life cannot be measured by 
years. If Methusaleh was a sluggish man, Shakspere really 
lived ten thousand years longer, and Napoleon outlived any 
easy-going patriarch. 

1 Outlines of Psychology, p. 187. 



2l6 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM' 

A motor idea is one in which the motor element is specially 
prominent. The image of an object at rest has less of this 
element than the image of an object in motion. If we form a 
definite image of such an object, we shall note the difference 
at once, and we shall very likely experience a different cerebral 
feeling. Literary criticism which does not call attention to 
motor images does not amount to much. We shall best under- 
stand them by noting and endeavouring to construct images of 
some moving natural objects in order to interpret the masters 
in literature. Shakspere says : 

"... those lily hands 
Tremble, like aspen leaves, upon the lute." 

"And Cytherea, all in sedges hid, 
Which seem to move and wanton with her breath." 

" And winking May-buds begin 
To ope their golden eyes." 

" Hop as light as bird from briar." 

" Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May." 

In the above lines, there are hands, aspen leaves, sedges, 
flowers, birds, and buds, not at rest, but moving. In fact, 
motion is their most prominent quality. The same is true of 
the images which the following lines suggest. 

" The bluebird, shifting his light load of song 
From post to post along the cheerless fence." 

" The thin-winged swallow skating on the air." 

" She seem'd as happy as a wave 
That dances on the sea." 

" The wild white bees of winter 
Swarm through the darkened air." 



MOTOR TRAINING 21? 

" But pleasures are like poppies spread, 
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed ! 
Or like the snowfall in the river, 
A moment white — then melts forever; 
Or like the borealis race 
That flit ere you can point their place ; 
Or like the rainbow's lovely form, 
Evanishing amid the storm.'" 

" Where the heifers browse — where geese 
Nip their food with short jerks." 

In these lines, we have moving bluebirds, swallows, waves, 
snowflakes, petals of flowers, aurora borealis, rainbows, heifers, 
and geese. This motor element, whether of the snow melting 
in the river or of the goose nipping the grass, is what gives in- 
dividuality and meaning to the object. The image of a field 
of waving wheat is much more interesting than of the same 
field when still. 

Motion alone produces anything, hence we can see the im- 
portance of motor ideas. Unfortunately the world is infested 
with a class of people, the activity in whose sensory tracts is 
not paralleled by action in the motor cells. A sensation may 
evaporate from the brain without causing the proper action, 
just as rich land may exist and be further fertilized by showers 
and yet produce no crops of value. The motor element in- 
volves effort and this is not always pleasant. 

A glance around us is nearly certain to discover some per- 
sons of marked deficiency in the world of action. They may 
like to learn and to continue absorbing knowledge, but they 
never make any worthy use of it. A visit to the reading-rooms 
of any library will enable us to find chronic sponge-like ab- 
sorbers of whatever is written. Their very faces come to have 
a dreamy relaxed expression. These persons generally fancy 



2l8 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

that they are " going to do " something soon, but the motor 
paralysis becomes more and more complete. Sometimes boys 
are allowed to bury themselves in book after book, until action 
becomes extremely irksome to them. They love to absorb 
ideas and to direct all their motor energy into dreaming or 
castle-building. In the case of the majority of people, motor 
action needs to be cultivated, and to be directed to definite 
ends. It is not enough for one to form an idea of becoming 
a great man ; he must do things to make himself great. 

Suggestion has much power in arousing the central nervous 
system to action. One of the best practical rules that we can 
formulate for developing the motor tendency in the central 
nervous system is this : Bring suggestion of the right kind to 
bear on growing youth. 

So few people have a really clear idea of what suggestion is, 
that we must explain its bearings. When a train of sensations, 
ideas, or thought — in short, when any mental train — is sud- 
denly interrupted by any object or idea, with strong motor 
qualities, this new object or idea is specially fitted to develop 
action in its direction. This definition, like all others, requires 
concrete illustrations to make it plain. An infant's eyes will 
follow a ball rolling across the floor, although they will speedily 
lose the ball when at rest. A child playing in a meadow will 
chase a butterfly flitting by. In these cases, sense objects in 
motion broke in upon the child's mental train, and suggested 
movement of eye or of the entire body in their direction. A 
part of this movement was of course reflex, but we must re- 
member that reflex movement in nerve cells lies at the basis 
of every higher act of will. A sensory stimulus pours into a 
nerve cell, is reflected outward along a motor nerve, and move- 
ment results. The highest acts of will merely have deliberation, 
choice, and inhibition added to these foundation reflexes. 



MOTOR TRAINING 219 

Imitation is the result of suggestion. A child on a visit 
watched the facial contortions of a person afflicted with St. 
Vitus' dance, and soon began from sympathetic imitation to 
acquire the same movements. When this child returned home, 
the affection spread to the other children. These nervous 
twitchings would probably soon have become habitual, had not 
the children been carefully separated from each other and 
exposed to nothing that suggested such movements. Persons 
have become confirmed stammerers from early association with 
one who stuttered. The motor response to impulses to speak 
soon became habitually uncertain. In fact, the stammering 
made a permanent change in the reactions in the motor cells. 
The writer knows a child who contracted from an older person 
the permanent habit of squinting in a most unsightly manner. 
It would be hard work to give to parents and teachers illustra- 
tions which are fraught with graver practical meaning than these. 
Children should be kept away from sense objects which suggest 
vicious or unwise courses of action. One reaction to such sug- 
gestions modifies the nerve matter. Repeated reactions plough 
out new paths in this matter, or change its manner of respond- 
ing to normal stimuli. 

As human beings grow older, ideal suggestions come to have 
more and more force. At first a sensory stimulus is the only 
cause that will develop movement in a child. It will later 
start in quest of something in the next room. Here, the idea 
develops movement. This is a marked advance over the pre- 
ceding state, when a toy had to be visible before the hands 
were stretched out to grasp it. 

The effects of suggestion are most striking in the case of 
those ideas which are correlated with prominent motor ele- 
ments. Some ideas tend toward pronounced movement; 
others have less of this quality. We may say with Wundt, 



220 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

" The memory image of a movement is apt at once to arouse 
the movement itself." 1 

A prime condition of motor training is to bring ideal sug- 
gestion to bear on young people. Hypnotism shows how 
powerful this is. As soon as the idea of a possible action is 
suggested to a hypnotized person, he immediately begins to 
act in conformity with the idea. If he is told to dance, his 
feet begin the proper movements. If the idea that he has 
the toothache is suggested to him, his face is drawn up with 
pain. The motor force generated by the idea flows out and 
moves the muscles in the direction indicated by the idea. 

A mistake is often made in thinking that only hypnotic 
subjects are controlled by suggestion. We are all under its 
influence to a certain extent. The only reason why all motor 
ideas do not cause us to act in their direction is because some 
of us have the power of inhibition more strongly developed 
and are better balanced than others. Suggestion is specially 
powerful with young people, and it becomes a matter of great 
importance to know what ideas to bring to bear on them and 
what to exclude, in so far as possible, from their lives. Several 
boys in New York State had their minds filled with deeds of 
highwaymen and train-wreckers. These ideas marked out a 
path for action, and the boys — some of them of good parent- 
age — actually wrecked an express train and were thereby 
guilty of murder. Some years ago the daughter of a governor 
of one of our States eloped with her coachman. The news- 
papers gave columns to the affair, detailing how the flirtation 
and familiarity began and progressed. Young ladies read 
these, and of course had their attention strongly directed 
toward things which should never have entered their heads. 
A large harvest of elopements and scandals was reaped. The 

1 Wundt's Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, p. 286. 



MOTOR TRAINING 221 

daughter of a millionnaire soon eloped with her coachman. 
Trunk murders became epidemic soon after the details of a 
notable ghastly crime were brought to the attention of the 
public. Some casual suggestions have started many a boy 
and girl on the road to an immoral life. Older people who 
realize the power of suggestion often shudder when they think 
how easily their lives might have been ruined at some critical 
time, had they not fortunately escaped certain forms of sug- 
gestion which overpowered others. 

While the idea of a movement always tends to start the 
movement, it is true that the will may immediately develop an 
idea of the consequences of the action, and this second idea 
may suggest a movement the opposite of the first. The idea 
of the exhilaration from a glass of strong drink may start a man 
toward the bar. An idea of some special things which his wife 
and children lack, or the recollection of a contemptible drunk- 
ard of early promise, may stop him. The inhibitory idea is 
not certain to appear ; nor, if it appears, is it sure to restrain 
the action. Shakspere showed that he understood this, when 
he has Horatio endeavour to keep Hamlet from following the 
Ghost : 

" What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, 
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff. 



The very place puts toys of desperation, 
Without more motive, into every brain 
That looks so many fathoms to the sea 
And hears it roar beneath." 

If the man really wished to be snowballed, he took the right 
course in asking the urchin, "Are you going to throw that 
snowball at me?" We may in some cases even doubt the 



222 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

wisdom of warning children against certain bad practices for 
fear of putting them into the children's heads. From this, we 
can see that the antecedent step to getting a thing done is to 
suggest it forcibly, or, in every-day parlance, " to put it into 
his head." 

If the child's early life is rich in sensuous material or in imi- 
tative promptings, there will be motor incentives enough. 
The trouble will come in directing his acts. With respect to 
models for imitation, it is impossible to be too careful. Imita- 
tive acts soon permanently modify motor nerve cells. On this 
head, we may say with Guyau : " Intercourse with respected 
relatives, a master, or any superior whatever must produce 
suggestions which extend through a child's lifetime. Educa- 
tion has the magic and ' charms ' spoken of by Callicles in 
the Gorgias, of which it makes use to tame the young lions 
when need arises. These are in man 'thoughts by imitation,' 
which are transformed from individual to individual, and gen- 
eration to generation, with the same strength as real instincts. 
I know a child of thirteen, who had read in Martin Paz, one 
of Jules Verne's novels, the description of a captivating heroine 
who had a mincing gait, and from that time forward the child 
endeavoured to take very short steps. The habit is now so in- 
veterate that she will in all probability never be able to rid 
herself of it." 1 

The acquisition of correct habits is the most important result 
of motor training. Habit is the process of associating a defi- 
nite muscular action with a sense impression or with an idea. 
If a child is properly trained, his motor response to the right 
will be unerring. Such a child will not stop with a sensation 
or with an idea, which amount to nothing when divorced from 
action. He will act in the proper way every time. To show 

1 Education and Heredity, p. 15. 



MOTOR TRAINING 223 

more definitely what we mean by an invariable motor reaction 
to a sensation in order to form a habit, let us show how the 
habit of putting things in their places is formed. A child should 
first be taught that the sensation due to seeing a thing out of 
its place must be followed by the action necessary to put the 
article in its place. The sensation must so often be associated 
with the action, that the one shall flow automatically into the 
other. There must be at once one definite action resulting 
from the sensation. This is habit. When a good engineer 
sees a red light on the track before him, the sensation imme- 
diately flows into the motor cells governing his arm, and the 
throttle valve is closed. There is no hesitation, no thought 
of an alternative course of action. 

The way to spoil either a child or. a young dog, is to allow 
it to react to a certain sensation one way to-day and another 
way to-morrow. Such a child may put a thing where it can 
be found, occasionally, but no dependence can be placed upon 
him. A pointer will be worthless as a hunting dog, if he is 
allowed to point at the game sometimes, and at others to 
bark or to rush on it. 

From another point of view we may define habit as motor 
modifications in nerve matter, which have become stable 
through the repetition of actions. This repetition renders 
actions more easily performed. There is at first friction 
between sensory and motor nerve cells and this must be 
decreased. It is much harder work to lock and unlock a 
new lock than one which has been in use for some time. 
There are rough projecting particles in the sliding parts, and 
these will finally be worn so smooth that but little friction will 
result. 

From the broadest point of view, memory is habit. In 
memory the nerve cells are again acting in a way in which 



224 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

they have acted before. Each repeated action deepens the 
tendency to act again in the same way. This shows the 
reason why we remember most easily things or acts which 
have been most often performed. Thus, we never forget the 
alphabet or how to walk, so long as our nervous system is not 
diseased. 

We may be asked to state precisely what happens in the 
central nervous system when habits are formed. There are 
two hypotheses to answer this. First, there is a new path 
ploughed out in nervous matter, so that a motor discharge 
proceeds more directly and more easily from one cell to 
another associated one. It sometimes happens that when we 
wish to go from one place to another, the railroad proceeds 
only in a roundabout way. At a certain junction we must 
wait and change cars. Suppose, however, that a new track is 
laid in an air line between the two places and that no change 
of cars is necessary. The journey can now be made much 
more quickly and easily than before. When we have had 
little repeated activity of the right sort in doing a certain 
thing, we are like the person who travels two sides of a 
right-angled triangle, e.g. the base and the perpendicular, 
instead of going by way of the hypothenuse. Habit of the 
right kind discovers that any two sides of a triangle are 
together greater than the third side, and travels by the 
shortest path. 

The second hypothesis maintains that there may be no new 
path formed in nerve matter because of repeated actions 
which lead to habit. This hypothesis uses the illustration 
of a new lock which is moved with difficulty. Although no 
new path is formed in which the lock slides back and forth, 
it is yet locked and unlocked more easily with use. The 
rough points in the old path are worn away so that there is 



MOTOR TRAINING 225 

less friction. It may be that repeated dynamic associations 
between cells clear out the path and reduce friction. A 
current of water in a stream may at last wear its bed smooth, 
so that the water may flow on more rapidly because there is 
less friction from projecting particles. 

It is not improbable that both theories may be true ; that 
not only may new and shorter routes of brain travel be 
developed, but also that existing paths may be employed with 
greater facility. 

When a piece of paper is folded, it can again be folded 
much more readily in the former crease. Suppose some one 
asks us to explain why this is the case. Very likely we shall say, 
" Here is a piece of paper which does not fold readily in any 
special place. We now crease it through the middle. You 
can see for yourselves that it will now fold readily in the 
middle." Of course, this is no explanation, but our failure 
to explain facts does not disprove their existence. We may 
say that there is a new molecular arrangement in the paper, 
and that it folds more easily because of this. Of course the 
next question comes promptly : Why is a new molecular ar- 
rangement better than an old for this purpose? Because 
this is the nature of molecules. This is plainly no answer, 
only a confession of ignorance. This answer stated in another 
way is : A new molecular arrangement facilitates habit because 
a new molecular arrangement does facilitate habit. 

The " why of the why " cannot be more satisfactorily an- 
swered in neurology than in other sciences. The illustration 
of the paper has been employed to show that if we cannot 
tell why paper folds more readily where it has before been 
folded, we should not be surprised if we cannot fully under- 
stand the changes in the brain corresponding to the forma- 
tion of habit. We may not be able to explain why practice 
Q ^ 



226 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

facilitates actions, but the practice is just as efficient as if we 
could. 

We may gain another view of habit by considering it organic 
memory. In strictest truth, all habit is memory * it is acting 
again in a way in which we have acted before. This organic 
memory may or may not be accompanied with consciousness. 
The organic memory of walking remains with us. A soldier 
may be conscious of the steps he is taking, but he has been 
known to march with regular steps while asleep. We fre- 
quently tie our neckties without thinking of the operation. 
The memory is organic, and when the first chain in the link 
is started, the remaining complex actions follow automatically. 

Unconscious organic memory alone renders possible our 
conscious intellectual lives of great richness and breadth. 
Man's intellectual achievements would be comparable to the 
stunted vegetation of the polar regions, were it not for the fact 
that his unconscious organic memory takes upon itself the exe- 
cution of myriad perplexing details. Excellent servants, who 
relieve the mistress of the house of the majority of cares, afford 
an analogous illustration. She has time left to improve her 
mind, and to entertain her guests. When we are talking, we 
are pitiable slaves if we have to centre our attention on the 
pronunciation and grammar, and thereby subtract so much 
from the thinking power. Suppose that there occur in a 
speech we are making such words as deficit, suite, gondola, 
dolorous, irreparable, naive, piquant, soughing, levee, — if we 
have been habituated aright, that is, if there is an organic 
modification corresponding to the correct pronunciation of 
these words, their unconscious enunciation will be right, and 
our attention can be centred entirely upon the stream of 
thought. 

Correctness in grammar, deportment, table manners, — in 



MOTOR TRAINING 



227 



all actions, in short, — depends on proper motor modifications 
in the central nervous system. The same is true of expertness 
in any muscular movements, whether in moving the vocal 
chords so as to speak a foreign language correctly, or in fin- 
gering the piano. After the plasticity of the nerve cells has 
passed away, the correct pronunciation of a foreign language 
can never be acquired. 

For the formation of habits, there must be repetition of 
dynamic associations between nerve cells early in life. For 
instance, suppose one wishes to be a ready speaker. Associa- 
tions must be formed between cells in different parts of the 
brain and the motor cells controlling the vocal chords. If the 
speaker wishes to describe something that he has seen, practice 
must have increased the associational efficiency of the paths 
between the sensory centre for sight in the occipital lobes, and 
the motor centre for speech. If something that he has heard, 
smelled, touched, or tasted, is to be described, there must be 
dynamic associations between different brain tracts. If the 
description is to be written instead of oral, there must be facile 
associations between these tracts and that portion of the brain 
concerned in moving the hand and fingers. The size of the 
brain and the number of its cells make far less difference than 
the way they are associated. Good roads and easy means of 
communication between different parts of a country are essen- 
tial to its prosperity. The same analogy holds true of the brain. 

Ribot puts the case correctly and clearly, when he says : 
"Organic memory supposes not only a modification of the 
nerve elements, but also the establishment between them of 
associations adapted to each special action — of certain dynamic 
associations which by repetition become as stable as the pri- 
mary anatomical connections. In our opinion the thing that 
is of importance, as supplying a basis for memory, is not only 



228 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

the modification impressed upon each element, but the way 
in which sundry elements are grouped together to form a 
complex. 

"A rich and well-stored memory is not a collection of im- 
pressions, bat an assemblage of dynamic associations, very 
stable and very readily called forth." 1 

In like manner Hering says : . " All living substance, espe- 
cially nerve matter, has the peculiarity that every irritation pro- 
duced in a limited region at once spreads to the adjoining 
parts. It continues spreading as long as it meets with any sub- 
stance which is capable of being similarly irritated, and which, 
so to speak, responds to such irritation. 

" If the virgin substance of the brain is excited and internally 
agitated by an irritation which has been transmitted through 
the nerve fibres of the sensory organs, an increased ability to 
reproduce the same kind of irritation is acquired by a per- 
manent change of its internal structure. If the sensory nerve 
again transmits the same irritation, the cerebral substance 
responds to it more easily." 2 

Habit is, therefore, a bundle of memories or tendencies to 
act again in a way in which we have acted before. Herein 
lies the tremendous importance of early actions. Their results 
do not end with the setting sun ; they are as imperishable as 
ourselves. To-day a man does something which he willed 
ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. It may be that he 
would gladly have left the deed undone, but the time to 
have reflected on the undesirability of such an action was 
not when it was last committed, but at its first occurrence, 
perhaps forty years before. One action fitted the nerve tract 
to act with greater ease in the same way again. By repeated 

1 The Diseases of Memory, Chap. I. 

2 The Specific Energies of the Nervous System. 



MOTOR TRAINING 



229 



motor responses in certain ways, the boy moulds his nervous 
system so that it will continue to react in the same way. At 
the start he may be master ; at the end he will be slave. It 
will be well if he is the slave of a sensible master; if his 
automatic responses are such as he would have made after 
due deliberation. 

Those children are specially fortunate who are compelled 
to acquire certain proper motor reactions before the reasons for 
them are understood. Such children will find out later that 
they have a wonderful mechanism properly fashioned to their 
hand. When the workings of the central nervous system are 
more widely known, there will be a reaction in favour of blind 
authoritative training early in life ; that is, if fit parents and 
teachers can be found to apply such training. Many a young 
dog has had to be whipped mercilessly to be taught to acquire 
habits which could have been easily formed in puppyhood. 
Many young men are dismissed from positions because habits 
of civility, self-restraint, and punctuality were not ingrained 
into the nervous tissue before their value was known. These 
losses of positions and unfitness for certain stations in life 
may be as hard for the young man to bear as the merciless 
whippings necessary to correct a dog which had not been 
properly trained. Even inanimate things can acquire the 
habit of making wonderful reactions to stimuli. It is well 
known that the wood of a Cremona violin, which had been 
used by the hands of none but masters, gradually acquired 
a molecular tendency to harmonious resonance. When the 
instrument was afterwards used by an ordinary player, he 
was astonished to find that it had a tendency to play well 
of itself and to refuse to respond to his mistakes by intro- 
ducing the amount of discord to which he was accustomed. 
The sooner the idea is exploded that a child should not be 



230 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 



y 



taught until it can see the why and wherefore of things, the 
better it will be for the world. 

If motor training in its initial stages were to depend on 
the thinking power of the individual undergoing the training, 
there would be little progress made until the nervous system 
had in great part lost its plasticity. Many persons would 
receive scarcely any training, were it not for the fact that 
their nervous systems are compelled to undergo motor modi- 
fications by intelligent parents. There are hourly illustrations 
of this. The parent makes the child say "he sits down" in 
place of "he sets down," "the sun sets" in place of "the sun 
sits." The child may not understand why he should use 
" sit " and " set " both intransitively, but he grows up as 
correct a speaker as if he could explain the inexplicable. 
He is not compelled to think which form is correct ; he can 
be thinking about something else, while the motor reactions 
of speech are habitually right. No person can think about 
two different things at the same time with great force, and 
the thinking hours of life are limited. To show how danger- 
ous it is to leave an individual's training until he is old 
enough to think out the reason for it, we may quote one of 
the most eminent German psychologists :" The old meta- 
physical prejudice that man ' always thinks ' has not yet 
entirely disappeared. I myself am inclined to hold that man/ 
really thinks very little and very seldom. Many an action 
which looks like a manifestation of intelligence most surely 
originates in association." 1 

From what has already been said, can be seen the impor- 
tance of becoming a motor automaton in certain directions 
early in life, so that thought can be occupied with higher 
duties. When we began to walk, the whole power of con- 

1 Wundt's Lectures on Human and. Animal Psychology, p. 363. 



MOTOR TRAINING 



231 



scious will would have been necessary to direct the move- 
ments. We could not have thought about anything else at 
the time. When the child first tries to form a letter of the 
alphabet, his whole power is expended in controlling the 
muscles. If a philosopher had lived until the age of forty 
without learning how to write, it would be some time before 
he could form the letters and think of fitting ideas to be 
expressed at the same time. When writing comes to be 
largely the result of an automatic discharge of motor cells, 
one can centre almost his entire attention on the thought- 
while writing at great speed. 

Wundt's remarks along this line are especially good. He 
says : " Any movement that has become altogether habitual 
is made instinctively. An impulse of will is, of course, neces- 
sary at the outset; but its effect extends to a whole series 
of actions, and each particular one takes place without effort 
and without knowledge : the series once started is continued 
to its end with the same unconscious certainty and purposive- 
ness as the reflex. The voluntary movements of early child- 
hood are uncertain and awkward; practice has not had time 
to transform them into instinctive acts. And the same is 
true of the adult whenever he wishes to perform some as yet 
unaccustomed action, of however simple a character. Pre- 
cision and grace of movement, then, depend upon certainty 
of instinct, not upon firmness of will. 

" This transformation of voluntary into instinctive activity is 
greatly furthered by the influence of the environment. From 
the first days of life we are surrounded by our fellow-men, and 
imitate their actions. And these mimetic movements are in- 
stinctive in character. As soon as the child's consciousness is 
aroused from its first sleepy passivity, it begins to perceive the 
expression of others' emotions, and to respond to them by 



232 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

similar emotions with corresponding impulses. The continued 
imitation by which a child comes to learn the language that is 
spoken around it, is impulsive, not voluntary. Even the peculiar 
word-formations of child-language are not, as is often wrongly 
held, invented by the child, but borrowed by it from its en- 
vironment, — from the words of nurse and mother, who, in 
their intercourse with it, adapt themselves to its level of mental 
development and capacity of articulation. 

"... the simplest conditions of instinctive action in general 
are to be found in the cases where it is the result of individual 
practice. Here the action simply indicates a disposition of the 
physical organization, which has been induced by movements 
often repeated in the past. The performance of a definite 
complex act and its connection with an adequate sense stimu- 
lus have become more and more matters of course, till at last 
they are rendered completely mechanical. . . . 

" The effect of ' practice ' and of ' habit ' can only be due to 
after effects of excitation, of the kind assumed by us for the 
explanation of instinctive movements. And, since the expres- 
sions of instinct are, par excellence, ' customary ' or habitual 
actions, their subsumption to the general law of practice needs 
no justification. That law runs as follows : the more frequently 
a voluntary action is repeated, the easier it is to perform, and 
the greater is the tendency of its constituents (if it is a com- 
plex act) to take on the reflex form, i.e. to arrange themselves 
in a connected series of movements, which runs on mechanically 
when once initiated by an adequate stimulus. 

"The formulation of this law shows us at once that its basis 
must be physiological. The goal attained by the process of 
practice is simply the mechanization of movements which were 
originally dependent upon psychical antecedents. That must 
mean that mechanical, i.e. physiological, alterations of the ner- 



MOTOR TRAINING 233 

vous system are at the bottom of the whole matter. We are 
still so much in the dark as regards the real nature of nervous 
processes, that we need not be surprised to find the exact 
physical and chemical character of these alterations quite 
unknown. If we know nothing more about them, we are quite 
certain they exist; the witness of the actual results of practice 
cannot be called in question. There is hardly any movement 
of the human body, however difficult, which we cannot, by 
continued practice and repetition, reduce to a mechanical cer- 
tainty so complete that it will be performed, even without any 
intention on our part, as the necessary reaction to certain 
sense-stimuli." 1 

Dr. Carpenter's conclusions in the same line are also 
specially interesting. He says : " The extraordinary adap- 
tiveness of the organism of man is shown in his power of 
acquiring a vast number of more special actions, which have 
no direct relation to his bodily wants, but minister to the 
requirements of his own creation. These often become, by 
a process of prolonged 'training,' not less automatic than 
the act of walking ; as is shown by the fact that, when once 
set going, they will continue in regular sequence, not only 
without any volitional exertion, but whilst the attention is 
wholly directed elsewhere. Thus, a musical performer will 
play a piece which has become familiar by repetition, whilst 
carrying on an animated conversation, or whilst continuously 
engrossed by some train of deeply interesting thought; the 
accustomed sequence of movements being directly prompted 
by the sight of the notes, or by the remembered succession 
of the sounds (if the piece is played from memory), aided 
in both cases by the guiding sensations derived from the 
muscles themselves. But further, a higher degree of the 
1 Wundt's Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, pp. 395, 402, 403. 



234 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

same ' training' (acting on an organism specially fitted to 
profit by it) enables an accomplished pianist to play a diffi- 
cult piece of music at sight ; the movements of the hands 
and fingers following so immediately upon the sight of the 
notes, that it seems impossible to believe that any but the 
very shortest and most direct track can be the channel of 
the nervous communication through which they are called 
forth. The following curious example of the same class of 
acquired aptitudes, which differ from instincts only in being 
prompted to action by the will, is furnished by Robert Houdin : 

"With a view of cultivating the rapidity of visual and 
tactile perception and the precision of respondent move- 
ments, which are necessary for success in every kind of 
'prestidigitation,' Houdin early practised the art of juggling 
with balls in the air; and, having after a month's practice 
become thorough master of the art of keeping up four balls 
at once, he placed a book before him and, while the balls 
were in the air, accustomed himself to read without hesita- 
tion. 'This,' he says, 'will probably seem to my readers 
very extraordinary; but I shall surprise them still more when 
I say that I have just amused myself with repeating this 
curious experiment. Though thirty years have elapsed since 
the time I was writing, and though I have scarcely once 
touched my balls during that period, I can still manage to 
read with ease while keeping three balls up.' 

" This last fact appears to the writer to be one of peculiar 
significance ; for it seems to justify the conclusion that even 
a most complex series of actions, which essentially depends 
on guiding perceptions, may be performed by the automatic 
mechanism, without any other volitional action than that 
which ' starts ' it, when once this mechanism has been devel- 
oped by the habitual exercise originally imposed on the nerve 



MOTOR TRAINING 235 

centres by the will. And further, it shows that this mechanism, 
having been originally so shaped at an early period of life, is 
kept up by nutritive action, even though not called into use ; 
just as the ' traces ' of our early mental acquirements are 
persistently retained in our organism long after we have lost 
the conscious memory of them." 1 

A study of motor reactions and their resulting habituations 
shows us why education should consist largely in doing. The 
act of doing results in changed physiological disposition. It 
is of little use for one to be told, or to read, how anything is 
done, unless he follows this with the appropriate actions. 
Telling one how to ride a bicycle, develop a negative, tie 
a knot, perform a chemical experiment, or make an article, 
is of very little use j but if the learner, under the proper 
guidance, is made to perform the necessary actions, he is 
on the only royal road leading to the desired result. The 
writer was once shown how to tie a flat knot and a bowline 
knot. Instead of making him take the rope and perform 
the complex movements under guidance, the instructor did 
all the tying himself. As a result, the writer cannot to-day 
tie a bowline knot. 

A triangle or a square means more to a boy after he has 
drawn it, and still more after he has carried a surveyor's 
instruments around and actually measured the ground within 
the square. Pupils will absorb only so much of history or 
of literature as they can interpret in terms of their own active 
experience. Fortunately, the power of suggestion tends to 
make the young imitate the actions of others. Those who 
have watched children after they have been taken to a factory 
or a circus can testify to the truth of this. If some youths 
are given a simple newspaper account to read, they mangle 

1 Carpenter's Mental Physiology, pp. 217, 218. 



236 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

it terribly, mispronouncing and miscalling the words because 
the motor speech cells have not had sufficient practice in 
reading. 

Action is the key-note to habit and character. If a habit 
in a given direction is desired, act in that direction. If one 
wishes a garment or a piece of paper folded in a certain 
way, he must be sure to see that the first folds are made 
in the proper way. Any one can soon demonstrate how 
well the nervous system is adapted for the formation of 
habits' and how hard it is to overcome the effects of previous 
action. Give a child a pack of cards to sort by suits. Have 
him put hearts well over to the right side of the table, clubs 
to the left, the other suits at well-separated intervals. Make 
accurate note of the time it takes to sort the pack. Gather 
the cards up and shuffle them as before, then have the child 
place clubs to the right, hearts to the left, and the other 
suits out of their former places. He will now be an appre- 
ciably longer time in sorting the pack. The reason for this 
shows how speedily a tendency toward habituation is formed. 
The sight of hearts had been associated with a muscular 
movement to the right, and during the second sorting the 
muscles will tend to move in the direction required for the 
first sorting. The inhibition of this movement and the turn- 
ing it in the proper direction take additional time. In so 
far as possible, we ought to do a thing at first as it will be 
required to be done for all future time. 

In the case of young children, we must remember that they 
gain control of the larger muscles, e.g. those of the shoulder 
and limbs, first. We must not expect a child to acquire for 
some time movements of the fingers sufficiently precise to 
trace a fine copy in a writing or drawing book. But since we 
get all things in life through action, we must remember that 



MOTOR TRAINING 237 

motor tracts need as careful training as sensory tracts, and 
that there may be undeveloped motor, as well as sensory, cells in 
the central nervous system. These spots will remain perma- 
nently undeveloped, unless they receive the proper modifica- 
tion while still plastic. The writer knows persons who in vain 
tried in middle life to acquire the necessary correlation of 
movements for swimming. These movements could have been 
gained easily and pleasantly while the motor cells were plastic, 
and, in many cases, drowning might thus have been avoided. 
We also occasionally see persons of both sexes, not over thirty, 
who, from lack of early motor development, cannot balance 
themselves sufficiently to learn to ride a bicycle. 

Above all, we must guard against ideas which do not result 1 
in action. The idea exists only as a prompter to action, im- 
mediate or remote. If the idea is of the right kind, the action 
need not be feared. The great danger from castle-building 
and inveterate novel-reading lies in divorcing ideas from action. 7^ 
The dreamer accustoms himself to become incapable of action. 
In the proper scheme of training every sensation and resulting 
idea should be made to have a bearing on action. Some vale- 
dictorians have amounted to little in the outside world because 
their ideas did not lead to action. 1 

1 For further consideration of the importance of associating action with ideas, 
see Halleck's Psychology and Psychic Culture, pp. 355-358. 



-..*' * 



CHAPTER XII 

The Central Nervous System and Enjoyment 

We shall in this chapter very briefly discuss the relations of 
the central nervous system to enjoyment, and we shall en- 
deavour to ascertain how the training of that system affects the 
pleasures and the pains of life. 

This is not the place to decide whether enjoyment is wicked 
and should therefore be discouraged, whether the only ethical 
nervous system is one that will not allow its possessor to enjoy 
himself, or whether the poorly nourished irritable nerves of 'the 
dyspeptic are most serviceable in the cause of morals. In 
mediaeval times, all bodily pleasure was considered sinful. It 
was thought right to starve and mutilate the body. » 

This belief has not wholly passed away. We find an occa- 
sional modern writer saying that it is not worth while to culti- 
vate the senses of taste and smell for the purpose of getting 
pleasure from them. The pleasure from eating a peach with 
a cheek like the dawn, or from inhaling the odour from a bank 
of roses, is merely nerve pleasure, and as the devil is the origi- 
nal creator of the nervous system, all pleasure springing from 
it must be unholy. 

The physiological psychologist of to-day pays no attention 
to these mediaeval opinions. He knows that all pleasure, from 
the highest to the lowest, rests either directly or indirectly 
on the workings of the central nervous system. He knows that 
the colours of the rainbow stimulate pleasurably the rods and 

238 



CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM AND ENJOYMENT 239 

cones in the eye, that the "breath of incense-breathing morn" 
has the same effect upon the nasal nerves. He has seen weakly 
persons, who attempted to give proper intellectual and emo- 
tional response to some noble altruistic deed, seized with a 
severe headache because the nerve cells were too feeble to 
afford the fitting physical substrate for this higher action of the 
soul. Vigorous and well-nourished nerve cells are an absolute 
requisite for the pleasures of the higher realms of thought and 
emotion. 

Life is not so rich in pleasures that we can afford to throw 
away a single one. Enjoyment is just as much enjoyment, is 
as divinely given, when it results from the odour of violets, the 
taste of a strawberry, the rhythmical sound of a simple melody, 
the touch of down, or the sight of autumnal foliage, as from 
any other form of action. The fact that we may have genuine 
nerve pleasure from sensory experiences with these objects is 
no reason why we should not advance to enjoyment of a higher 
kind. This nerve pleasure is rather a necessary preliminary 
to higher types of enjoyment; for we notice more carefully 
what gives us simple pleasure, and careful observation is a pre- 
requisite to the higher intellectual life. The one who defrauds 
himself, or has his teachers defraud him, of any of the normal 
pleasures of even taste or smell, is losing a part of his birth- 
right in life. 

Those persons who decry proper enjoyment of any kind are 
invariably hard and cold, unimaginative, and undesirable for 
companions. The man who experiences genuine happiness in 
eating a juicy peach will be much more apt to bring one to his 
child and to think how the little fellow will enjoy it. In the 
generality of cases, nerve pleasure within proper limits means 
the furtherance of the life and well-being of the individual; 
while pain is an alarm signal to warn us that we are suffering 



240 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

harm. Where we find an individual whose nerve cells are suf- 
ficiently strong to respond with pleasure to many of the stimuli 
of life, we have one who is also specially fitted for enjoyment 
in higher fields. 

A brief study of the way in which pleasure is related to the 
condition of the nervous system will enable us to lay down 
some rules that will be of practical benefit. Pleasure is always 
the result of the use of stored force of some kind or other. 
This force may be physical, monetary, or intellectual. All 
kinds of force, with the different varieties of pleasure resulting 
therefrom, rest upon physical well-being as a foundation. 

Whenever nerve cells have accumulated an excess of energy, 
pleasure always accompanies working this off in a normal way. 
The desirability of accumulating this stored force is therefore 
evident. After this energy has been expended, pain results if 
the action is persisted in. Any of the muscular movements 
illustrate this truth. A piano player or a hunter will find 
pleasure in discharging the stored energy in the motor nerve 
cells in the varied movements necessary to strike the keys, or 
find the game. There, however, comes a time, which varies in> 
different persons, when the energy is exhausted, and further 
movement causes pain. Any person who has spent much time 
in a large picture gallery has perhaps experienced great pleas- 
ure in looking at the paintings for an hour or two. If he keeps 
on his feet studying the pictures for a much longer time, weari- 
ness and pain ensue, because the surplus energy has been 
rapidly drained off by the muscular and intellectual efforts in- 
volved in the study. Whenever a nerve cell, after parting with 
its stored force, is called on to keep responding to the same 
stimulus, pain results. 

Marshall 1 expresses the laws of pleasure and pain concisely : 

1 Pain, Pleasure, and ^Esthetics, p. 218. 



CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM AND ENJOYMENT 24 1 

" We may properly say that all pleasure is the coincident of 
the use of surplus stored force, and that all pain is the coin- 
cident of organic conditions, which imply that the energy of 
reaction is less than that which should be expected to result 
from the stimulus reaching the organs, whose action determines 
the mental elements in each case." We can see why attention, 
which depends on brain cells for its physical basis, cannot be 
long continued with full intensity. The correlated nerve cells 
are all the time parting with their energy, and there must soon 
be a period for recuperation. The brain is at its best for only 
a few hours of intense action each day. We can thus see how 
precious attention is. It will not remain long at its maximum, 
and the hours of life are extremely limited when we can employ 
attention at its high-water mark. We ought, therefore, to be 
much more careful of wasting such a power than of squandering 
our money. 

We must now consider the practical question : How shall we \/ 
increase the amount of stored nerve force ? Is there any avail- 
able way for enlarging the storage facilities of cells? Fortu- 
nately there are methods which the weakest persons in the world 
can employ for gradually strengthening their cells. Whenever 
any part of the body is exercised, more blood flows there. 
Now, this blood is laden with nutriment which strengthens that 
special part. Suppose that we are exercising our ears, listening 
to the songs of birds and discriminating between them. This 
act of attention sends more blood to the cells in the temporal 
lobes, and also to the parts of the brain intimately connected 
with them. The cells thus receive more nutriment, and in- 
crease in vigour and capacity. If, when blindfolded, we en- 
deavour to discriminate between different flowers by the sense 
of smell, more blood goes to the olfactory brain cells. They 
become stronger, and capable of storing more energy. Per- 



242 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

haps a year later, in a different locality, we experience a thrill 
of pleasure from the recognition of a flower. Our capacity for 
enjoyment has increased because of this sensory exercise. 

Even the higher processes of thought affect the brain, as the 
rise in delicate thermometers placed against the scalp, testify. 
As the cells correlated with thinking are exercised, and there- 
fore grow stronger, intellectual action becomes more pleasant. 
A well-trained nervous system ought to have a large amount of 
stored force which can be pleasurably used in the various forms 
of intellectual, emotional, and voluntary action. In every way 
in which we wish to obtain any of the higher forms of enjoy- 
ment, there must have been previous exercise along this special 
line. If we wish to appreciate poetical passages relating to the 
beauties of nature, this power will be due to the fact that the 
stimuli from those objects have affected the brain. The energy 
from these stimuli is stored in the brain in the altered condition 
of the cells whereby recognition and assimilation are possible. 
As we are more specially concerned with sensory and motor 
modifications, we must again call attention to the importance of 
the proper exercise along these lines as the foundation for future 
happiness. Enjoyment of the higher intellectual kind will come 
naturally if there are good foundations on which it can rest. 

A study of pain is also valuable, for it is so closely related to 
pleasure. After the stored nerve force has been exhausted, 
pain results if the same stimulus continues to be applied. Pain 
is, therefore, seen to be as useful as an alarm bell, which signifies 
the existence of danger. If no pains were present, or if we dis- 
regarded them, we might speedily destroy our bodies. When 
we grasp a hot iron, the pain is useful to warn us to drop an 
object which is injuring us. There are, however, some pleas- 
urable forms of activity which impair the system ; as, for in- 
stance, some injurious chemicals have a pleasant, sweetish 



CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM AND ENJOYMENT 243 

taste. Hence, in these matters, we must listen to the voice of 
experience, that of our ancestors, as well as our own. Mar- 
shall * states the case correctly when he says : " The laws of 
survival and development, however, will, in the long run, bring 
about a general correspondence between the conditions of 
pleasure and individual advantage, and the conditions of pain 
and individual disadvantage ; but, with this general correspond- 
ence, we must expect to find many exceptions, as we do find 
many of the sweets of life disadvantageous to us as individuals, 
and many of its bitters advantageous." 

When we are developing any power, we shall frequently find 
that a certain amount of pain is a necessary antecedent to in- 
creased development. Suppose that a girl feels pleasure from 
the use of her muscles during a three-mile walk in the country. 
If she stops walking the moment she begins to feel slightly 
fatigued, she gains very little additional power. If she now 
walks three and one-half miles, that is, half a mile beyond the 
point where she feels no fatigue, she will put her motor cells, 
and the muscles controlled by them, in the best possible con- 
dition for assimilating more nutriment. Other things being 
equal, the fatigue point will be removed farther away, and she 
will not even begin to feel tired after finishing three and one- 
half miles. She may, by thus gradually developing her powers 
through exercise and the consequently increased capacity for 
assimilating nutrition, come to enjoy a walk of twenty miles, as 
many English girls do. 

We have already seen that exercise decreases the volume of 
the nerve cell, and that fatigue must not be pushed beyond the 
point where rest and nutrition cannot speedily restore the 
powers of the cell. Occasionally too great a strain is imposed 
on the nervous system, and it never regains its normal vigour. 
J Pain, Pleasure, and ^Esthetics, p. 218, 



244 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

In general, however, we may say that youthful nerve cells not 
only speedily recover from ordinary fatigue, but they also gain 
additional vigour from such exercise. This is not the case with 
persons who have passed middle life. In old age, the cells 
recover from fatigue very slowly and incompletely. 

Acquired tastes are frequently the source of many of the 
pleasures of life. There are many things in which we take no 
interest originally, things which are positively distasteful at the 
start, but from these we often grow to receive much enjoy- 
ment. From repeated exercise, the nervous system acquires 
new storage facilities, and new pleasures are the result of using 
this stored energy. " The entrance to most studies is attended 
with painful labour ; but, after a while, they become sources of 
positive pleasure. It has been well said that acquired tastes 
are so many acquired ways of getting pleasure from things 
which were once distasteful. Raw oysters, tomatoes, and 
pickled olives are physical instances. Many studies furnish 
mental illustrations." * 

There is no point in the relations of the nervous system to 
enjoyment more important than a knowledge of the fact that 
the foundations for enjoyment must be laid in youth, while 
nerve matter is still plastic. It may be hard work to teach an 
old dog new tricks ; but it is still harder work to get him to 
enjoy them. Later in life one cannot enlarge the storage facil- 
ities of the nervous system to any great extent, nor can he 
easily acquire new tastes. After parents have passed the 
greater portion of their life in a treadmill of hard work, their 
children have sometimes taken them away on a trip to provide 
enjoyment for them. The parents have not infrequently been 
wretched because they could no longer adapt themselves to 
new situations. 

1 Halleck's Psychology and Psychic Culture, p. 244. 



CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM AND ENJOYMENT 245 

During a period in the life of every boy and girl, the nervous 
system is ripe for a certain course of action. If this period 
is allowed to pass without exercise in the special directions 
fitted to secure various kinds of enjoyment, the early plasticity 
is soon lost, and this exercise, if attempted later, will prove 
irksome. A striking illustration of this was shown in the case 
of a gosling which was reared in a kitchen away from water. 
After several months, it was taken to a pond, but refused to go 
in. When the gosling was thrown in, it hurried out, like a hen, 
in a frightened way. The desire for swimming had been sup- 
pressed. The fact that the nervous system will at a certain 
time react to stimuli which fail to affect it a little later, is 
shown in the case of chickens. A short time after hatching, 
the clucking of a hen will develop motor reactions which 
cause them to follow her. If the chickens are kept away from 
the hen for a week, the clucking never calls forth the usual 
motor response, but they will then follow the whistle or call of 
any person to which they have been accustomed from birth. 
A puppy brought up on a hard floor will frequently make a 
feint of burying a bone, but as the early environment is un- 
suitable for developing the instinct, it is often altogether aban- 
doned, although the grown dog may be allowed to wander at 
will where the earth is soft. Darwin found that a species of 
caterpillar naturally fond of the leaves of a certain kind of plant 
would soon lose its liking for them, if accustomed at birth to 
eat a different leaf. So pronounced does this dislike become, 
that worms have been known to die rather than eat the favourite 
leaf of the species, if they have been reared on different food. 

Lack of fitting exercise at the time when the nervous system 
is ripe for response is dwarfing in the case of human beings. 
In this way, their field of enjoyment becomes very narrow ; the 
situations that are irksome or positively painful are extremely 



246 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

numerous. One can frequently see at recess, around the edges 
of the yard of an advanced school, boys who never participate 
in the sports. In many cases these boys were not allowed to 
play with other boys or to acquire a liking for games while the 
nervous system was adaptable and ripe for these special kinds 
of action. A liking for travel, music, studying animals,— 
indeed, for all the special kinds of sensory exercise in connec- 
tion with certain objects, and for the proper motor responses 
thereto, — must be acquired when the nervous system is ripe for 
them. It is useless to plant Indian corn in the autumn, and it 
is equally useless to expect to receive pleasure from the nervous 
system in varied forms of exercise, if these have not been tried 
when the nervous system was ready to be moulded by them. 

We may, therefore, lay down this general rule of procedure 
in order to augment the pleasure-giving powers of nerve cells : 
l/'To increase the strength and storage capacity of the nervous 
system, subject it to the proper exercise, in as many. varied 
directions as possible, in youth. This exercise lessens the vol- 
ume of nerve cells and leaves them in a state where rest and 
an increased assimilation of nutriment are necessary. Physi- 
ologists have demonstrated that more blood carrying nutritive, 
materials flows to cells that are exercised than to those that 
are not. Herein lies an additional reason for the early exercise 
of all brain tracts, sensory and motor alike, since they will 
thereby gain more nutriment and strength. 

We come now to consider the effect of habituation and au- 
tomatic motor responses to stimuli. We have seen in the last 
chapter that habituation so decreased the friction in actions 
that they came to be performed with less and less conscious- 
ness. The watch is wound, the word mispronounced, the error 
in grammar made, the ungraceful movements continued, with- 
out consciousness of the character of the action. On testing 



CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM AND ENJOYMENT 247 

our watches, we are frequently surprised to find that we have 
wound them. We can scarcely believe that we have mispro- 
nounced the word, or made the grammatical slip. 

The relations of habituation to enjoyment are properly 
studied because pleasure is an accompaniment of consciousness, 
and habituation tends to cause the usual motor responses to 
take place without the intervention of consciousness, and often 
distinctly below its threshold. Still more important is the fact 
that pleasure depends on the use of stored nervous force. The 
more habitual the action, the more constant the drain on the 
nervous reservoir, and the less will be the accumulation of 
energy. In order to store this, there must be periods of rest. 
Habitual action keeps the faucet turned on the most of the 
time, and as soon as a little energy accumulates, out it flows. 

The occupations of the majority of humanity involve a 
treadmill routine, and we can, from the foregoing considera- 
tions, the better understand why there is so little pleasure 
in the steady vocations of life. The actions necessary in 
them not only become more automatic and are correlated 
with less consciousness, but they also drain off the nervous 
energy as fast as it accumulates. For this reason we hear 
so many people advising against choosing their own profes- 
sion or business. They realize that their own has given them 
little keen enjoyment, and they conclude that some other 
would necessarily be more pleasurable. 

It is true that some vocations are subject to less routine 
than others, and some are for that reason the more enjoy- 
able. The student in many lines does not keep repeating 
the same facts, but he proceeds from new truth to new truth, 
frequently making novel discoveries as long as he lives. The 
book-keeper, on the other hand, is constantly busy with the 
same ten numerals. 



248 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

If any life is to be rich in enjoyment, the principle of 
contrast must be employed. By following contrasted lines 
of action, the energy stored in some cells can be used while 
the others are resting. The optic nerve apparatus yields 
pleasurable sensations as soon as acted upon by the stimuli 
of the buds and blossoms of the spring. The nerve cells 
have been storing force all winter, and hence for some time 
the response to the leafage and blossom of tree and flower 
is very keen. Since these stimuli remain well-nigh constant, 
they rapidly drain off the accumulated energy, and the pleas- 
urable response becomes less marked. By midsummer we 
often find ourselves scarcely noticing the leaves, unless there 
is about them some novel feature that strikes our attention, 
such as an added glow of freshness from dew or rain, a pleas- 
ant noise from their rustling in the wind, or the tossing of the 
branches in a storm. After a change of boarding place, per- 
sons often think the food at a hotel is unusually good ; but 
the bill of fare varies little from day to day, and finally the 
viands seem so monotonous that but slight pleasure is experi- 
enced in eating. Druggists say that they often sell a great 
deal of soda-water in the spring before it is very warm. This 
drink then seems unusually good, because none has been tasted 
for a long while. They allow the boys who tend the fountain 
to drink all they choose. For the first few days, the boys 
consume a great deal, but they become less and less fond 
of it. 

Is the nervous system, then, so constituted that its habitual 
and automatic actions must be productive of slight enjoyment? 
The facts in the case demand an affirmative answer to this 
question. How, then, is enjoyment to be secured? The 
conditions of life are such that automatic expertness is neces- 
sary in most lines, whether in weaving a piece of cloth, playing 



CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM AND ENJOYMENT 249 

a musical instrument, or attending to the routine of business. 
The successful man in any trade or profession must make his 
expertness a matter of ingrained neural habit. There must, 
therefore, necessarily be in most vocations little keen enjoy- 
ment. The well-worn neural paths constantly allow the escape 
of the energy without an act of will, or indeed of more con- 
sciousness than attends many reflex acts. 

The most marked pleasures are to be obtained from the 
side issues of life. Hence, then, the question, How is enjoy- 
ment to be secured ? should be answered : Not from the 
vocations, but from the avocations of life ; not from the 
treadmill, but from those occasional excursions into the by- 
paths of novelty, or rather of intermitted action. If the 
business man is a lover of flowers, plants, and trees, he will 
take far more pleasure in his garden and orchard than in his 
business. He may wish that he could give all his time to 
them, thinking that enjoyment would be continuous. But he 
forgets that the novelty would then wear off, and gardening 
would become a humdrum business. The amateur takes keen 
delight in photography on his summer trips, but the profes- 
sional finds it as much of a treadmill as most other vocations. 
Every person should have some side issues which he finds 
productive of enjoyment. These may be developed at every 
turn. Music, horses, boating, fishing, reading, gardening, col- 
lecting various things, from old books to rare china, partici- 
pation in philanthropic movements, travelling, an amateur 
knowledge of ornithology, botany, and myriad other things 
may furnish many side excursions into a land of pleasure. 

Marshall's remarks on this line are well considered. He 
says : " All habitual exertion, whatever be its field, must 
become indifferent, and in all cases we must turn to paths 
not too commonly trodden if we are to obtain pleasure. 



250 EDUCATION OF CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM 

Richelieu amused himself by writing bad tragedies ; Darwin 
by reading crude novels. . . . 

" The use of well-rested organs is the basis of the pleasure- 
seeker's universal search for novelty ; not absolute newness, 
but new arrangements of activities which have been customary, 
but not lately repeated ; restoration of stimuli which for some 
time past have not acted upon us. . . . 

" We have learned that the man who by overwork has lost 
all interest in things, all capacity for enjoyment, has exhausted 
his system as a whole, and needs entire rest if he is to regain 
this lost interest. We have learned that loss of interest in one 
special line of activity is to be regained only by working in 
new lines, to the exclusion of the one in which we have 
overworked." 1 

On its negative side, habit is not inimical to enjoyment ; for 
no one can enjoy himself unless he has formed good habits. 
Actions that are at first genuinely disagreeable grow to be 
neutral after we have become habituated to them. The 
vocation of many a one is irksome, even irritating, at the 
start. As he looks toward the future, he wonders how he 
can long endure the jarring and the nervous friction. Habitu- 
ation soon decreases these, and the nerve currents glide along 
smoothly and automatically in the performance of the custom- 
ary tasks. It is well that habituation removes the sting from 
many employments ; for the street-cleaner, hod- carrier, night- 
watchman, accountant, fireman, engineer, pilot, boiler-maker, 
are necessities in life. The capacity of the nervous system 
for habituation makes their life tolerable. The effects of habit 
go as far toward decreasing pain as toward lessening acute en- 
joyment. 

In this work, the early development of all the sensory and 

1 Pain, Pleasure, and Aesthetics, pp. 230, 257, 258. 



CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM AND ENJOYMENT 25 1 

motor powers has been urged, in order to make knowledge 
complete and to achieve success in the world of action. 
There is a further reason for the early development of as 
many capacities as possible, for these may afterward become 
the by-paths of enjoyment. Later on in life, we cannot mark 
out new paths, but we can traverse old ones with much 
pleasure. If we store force in our youthful brain cells by 
giving them full sensory exercise and having them make 
the proper motor responses thereto, a renewal of these forms 
of action will be pleasurable in later life. The man who has 
been away from the country for many years finds great enjoy- 
ment in again identifying the birds by their song, in hearing 
the wind sighing through the pines, in recognizing a wild 
flower beside a murmuring brook. This will prove true only 
in case he has passed through these experiences in youth. 
Action on entirely new lines is generally irksome after the 
nervous system has passed the plastic stage ; but the repeti- 
tion of former enjoyable actions will then rarely fail to give 
pleasure. 



INDEX 



Age, in relation to training, 94-108, 
228-230, 234, 235. 
diminishes plasticity of cells, 95. 
affecting weight of brain, 96. 
decreases association fibres, 56, 57, 

97, 139- 
affects productiveness after thirty, 100. 
inhibits new ideas, 102, 108. 
of greatest productivity, 102-108. 
and enjoyment, 244-246, 249, 251. 
Aphasia, motor, 15, 16. 
Association fibres, 24, 25, 55-57, 139. 
chart of, 57, 97. 
paths of, in brain, 58. 
dynamic, 73, 227. 

development of, 58, 59, 209, 210, 227. 
Attention, effect of on nerve cells, 61, 
62, 241. 
involves physical strain, 66, 72. 
not long continuous at maximum, 67. 
and unchanging objects, 67. 
and inertia in nerve cells, 68, 69. 
to several different things at same 
time, 71. 
Auditory impressions, in barbaric age, 
48. 
when better than ocular, 49-53. 
illustration of part of brain concerned 
in, 49. 
Automatism, see Reflex Action and 
Habit. 

B 

Bayne, on Shakspere's environment, 

173. *75. l8 3. l86 - 
Belief, importance of, in training, 41, 42. 
Binet, on normal man, no. 

25 



Books, and sensory training, 130, 131. 

studied by Shakspere, 174-180, 197. 

people well-educated without, 182. 
Boston, contents of children's minds 

in, 131. 
Brain (see also Nerve cells), descrip- 
tion of, 9-27. 

landmarks of, 9, 10. 

lobes of, 10. 

convolutions of, n, 12. 

monkey's, 13, 14. 

motor localization in, 13, 14, 16. 

surgical operations on, 14, 15. 

sensory centres in, 16-19. 

memory centres in, 19. 

each part of, reacts in terms of its 
own individuality, 20. 

cortex of, 21, 29. 

number of cells in, 21, 43. 

interior of, 21-24. 

association fibres in, 24, 25, 55-57. 

projection fibres in, 22. 

blood supply in, 25. 

effect of mental work on, 25, 26. 

weight of, 26, 96. 

fatalistic or machine aspects of, 28- 
45. 230-235. 

animals minus the, 30-32. 

influenced by mind, 45. 

possible modifications in, 45. 

undeveloped spots in, 47, 109, 237. 

age at which fibres in, cease develop- 
ing, 55-57- 

motor and sensory paths in, 58, 59. 

diagram illustrative of associative 
paths in, 59. 

cells not well associated in, 60. 

decrease in weight of, 96, 97. 

fibres of, decrease with age, 56, 57, 97. 



254 



INDEX 



Brain, less plastic with age, 97-102. 
developed by formation of images, 

149-170. 
how modified by habitual actions, 

224-228 . 
Bridgman, Laura, examination of her 

brain, 46, 47, 109. 
Browne, Sir Crichton, on declining 

power of age, 100, 101. 
Browning, sensory training of, 147. 



Cambridge students, brain growth of, 
96. 

Carpenter, Dr., on early plasticity, 107. 
on habit, 233-235. 

Cells, see Nerve cells. 

Cerebellum, 9, 10. 

Cerebrum, see Brain. 

Chaucer's early environment, 85. 

City, environment of, 77, 78. 

Consciousness, unnecessary for guid- 
ance by sight, 30, 31. 
number of separate things in, grasped 

at same time, 71. 
intensity of, in different people, 72. 
has a motor element, 215. 

Country, environment of, necessary for 
developing central nervous system, 
78-80, 92, 132. 

Cultivation, see Age, Brain, Habit, 
Motor training, Nerve cells, Senses. 



Darwin, on change of environment, 
81. 
on youthful recuperation, 98. 
on habituation, 99. 
Decussation of fibres, 9. 
Delbceuf, quoted, 54. 
Development (see also Age, Associa- 
tion, Brain, Environment, Images, 
Motor training, Nerve cells, Senses, 
Shakspere) retarded by environ- 
ment, 76-78. 
of all sensory tracts, 109-129. 
of a few brain tracts, no, in, 129. 
objects for, of central nervous sys- 
tem, 130-170, 171-208, 209-237. 



Development of fibres of association, 

55-57. 139- 
image-formation, necessary for, 149- 

170. 
Donaldson, on localization, 4. 
on fatalism, 38. 

on Laura Bridgman's brain, 47. 
on undeveloped brain cells, 47. 
on fatigue in nerve cells, 63, 64. 
on undeveloped fibres of association, 

139- 
Du Bois Reymond, quoted, 20. 



Education, see Age, Association, Brain, 
Environment, Images, Motor train- 
ing, Nerve cells, Senses, Shak- 
spere. 
Emerson, quoted, 136. 
Encephalon, 4, 9. 

Enjoyment, in relation to the central 
nervous system, 238-251. 
rests on action in nerve cells, 239, 240. 
necessity of cultivating capacity for, 

238. 
the result of stored nerve force, 240, 

241. 
Marshall on, 240, 249. 
how to increase sum of, 241-244, 

246, 251. 
contrast, demanded for, 248, 249. 
secured from side issues, 249, 250. 
from repeating early actions, 251. 
Environment, effect of, on central ner- 
vous system, 76-93. 
of great men, 80-93. 
of Shakspere, 173-207. 
of Milton, 80, 85, 86. 
of other authors, 86-91. 
drawbacks of city, yj, 78. 
desirability of change of, 81, 185. 
effects of human, 82, 83. 
Dr. G. S. Hall on, 132. 



Fatalistic aspects of central nervous 

system, 28-45. 
Fatigue, effects of, on nerve cells, 63, 64. 
on memory, 66. 



INDEX 



255 



F'atigue and nutrition, 75. 

Flatau, Dr., quoted, 25. 

Foster, M., on localization, 3, 12, 18. 

on machine aspects of brain, 30. 
Frog, number of motor nerves in an- 
terior root of spinal cord, 8. 

removal of brain of, 17, 29. 



Galton, Sir Francis, on rapid intellect- 
ual progress, 83. 
on increase in brain weight, 101. 
on visualizing, 155-159. 

Genius, longer period of plasticity of, 
96, 107. 

Greenwood, J. M., on contents of 
children's minds, 131. 

Grove, Sir W., on necessity for motor 
development, 83. 

Guyau, on suggestion, 42, 222. 

H 
Habit, James on, 95. 
cultivation of, 222-237. 
as result of modifications in nerve 

matter,* 223-228. 
repetition of actions, necessary for, 

228, 232. 
should be ingrained early, 229. 
makes automatons, 230-234. 
Wundt on, 231-233. 
Carpenter on, 233-235. 
effect of, on enjoyment, 246-250. 
correct, necessary for success, 249. 
Hall, G. Stanley, on contents of chil- 
dren's minds, 131. 
on environment, 132. 
Hearing, brain localization of, 16, 17. 
images of, 123-125. 
special objects and images for culti- 
vating central nerve cells of, 145, 
146, 162, 163. 
Hodge, on fatigue, 63. 
Hoffding, Harald, quoted, 21. 
Hypnotic phenomena, 35, 42, 220. 

I 
Ideas, see Images. 

Images, character of Milton's sensory, 
113-127. 



Images, character of Shakspere's, 
111-129, 171-208. 

of smell, 111-126. 

of taste, 117, 119. 

of touch, 119-122. 

of temperature, 122, 123. 

muscular, 122. 

visual, 126, 127. 

necessary to modify brain cells, 149- 
170. 

affecting the body, 152. 

variety of, capable of recall, 152, 153. 

of all senses may be recalled, 153, 
154- 

motor, 215-222. 
Imitation, 219, 222. 
Imitative tendencies, 33, 34. 
Immaterial hypothesis, 45. 
Impulses, sensory, 32, 33. 
Inertia, of nerve cells, 68. 

J 
James, William, on physiological 
memory, 38. 
on habit, 95. 

K 

Karr, quoted, 79. 

Keen, Dr. W. W., on surgical opera- 
tions in brain, 15. 
Kiilpe, on motor element in recollec- 
tion, 215. 



Ladd, G. T., quoted, 20, 151. 
Literature, how its study may best 

modify brain cells, 164-170. 
Localization of function, 12-25. 

associational, 24, 25. 

of hearing, 17. 

importance of knowledge of, 2, 3. 

motor, 13-16. 

of sight, 17. 

of smell, 17. 

of taste, 17. 

of touch, 18. 
Longfellow, early environment of, 90, 
91. 



256 



INDEX 



M 



Machine aspects of central nervous 

system, 28-45, 230-235. 
Marshall, on enjoyment, 240. 
on pain, 243. 
on habitual exertion, 249. 
Maurice, F. D., quoted, 44. 
Medulla oblongata, 9, 10. 
Memory, cerebral centre of, 19. 
and nutrition, 72, 74. 
should recall experience of all senses, 

no. 
nerve cells of, 150, 151. 
depends on modifications in nerve 

cells, 153. 
resemblance of, to original sensation, 

213, 214. 
tends to start motor action, 215. 
as habit, 223, 224, 228. 
unconscious organic, 226. 
depends on dynamic association, 
228. 
Milton, environment of, 85, 86. 
age of productivity of, 103. 
character of sensory images of, 113- 

127. 
olfactory images of, 113-116. 
gustatory images of, 118, 119. 
tactile images of, 121, 122. 
auditory images of, 124, 125. 
visual images of, 127. 
uses images from every sense, 129. 
M'Kendrick and Snodgrass, on locali- 
zation, 19, 20. 
on an immaterial agent, 45. 
Modifications, the possible, in nerve 

matter, 46. 
Monkey's brain, 13, 14. 
Motor action, accompanies every sen- 
sation, 210-212. 
danger in not cultivating, 217, 218, 

237- 
tends to follow memory images, 215, 

220. 
of young children, 236. 
Motor brain tracts, 12-16. 
Motor centres, 13-16. 
of speech, 15. 



Motor development, 83, 84. 

in Cromwell, 91. 

exercise for, 209-237. 
Motor element, in hypnotism, 34, 42. 

resulting from sensations, 33-36. 

in images, 213-217. 
Motor images, see Images. 
Motor nerve fibres, 6-8. 
Motor training (see also Habit), 209- 

237- 
Muscular sense, 160, 161. 

N 
Nerve cells, illustrations of, 5. 
size of, 5. 
number of, 5, 21. 
sensitive to stimuli, 5. 
tenacious in retaining modifications, 

5,36. 
relation of, to nerve fibres, 4. 
undeveloped, 47, 109. 
number of, determined at birth, 42, 43. 
motor, how modified, 53, 54. 
plasticity of, 54, 74, 95. 
how affected by attention, 61, 62, 241. 
how affected by fatigue, 63, 64, 72. 
energy of, differs at different times 

of day, 64-66. 
inertia of, 69. 

affected by stimuli during sleep, 70. 
correlated with different intensities 

of consciousness, 72. 
affected by health, 72. 
affected by food and nutrition, 73- 

75, 241, 246. 
modified by stimuli, 73. 
effect of cramped quarters on, 76-78. 
less responsive to continuous stimuli, 

82, 241-250. 
habituation of, 94, 95, 223-228. 
recuperative power of, 97, 98. 
strengthened by exercise, 99, 240- 

244. 
most easily trained in youth, 95, 107, 

229. 
developed by formation of images, 

149-170. 
significance of varying intensity of 

action of, 150. 



INDEX 



25/ 



Nerve cells, employed in sensation 
and ideation, 150, 151. 
modifications in, furnish physical 

basis of memory, 153. 
effect of habit on, 224-228. 
condition of, in relation to enjoy- 
ment, 240-251. 
how to strengthen, 241-244. 
Nerve fibres, relation to nerve cells, 4. 
sensory, number of, 6. 
two classes of, 6. 
sensory, 6. 
motor, 6-8. 
decussation of, 9. 
associational, 24, 25. 
projection, 22. 

development of, of association, 58, 
59, 209, 210, 227. 
Nervous system (see also Association 
fibres, Brain, Cerebellum, Medulla, 
Nerve cells, Nerve fibres, Senses, 
Spinal cord) , central, defined, 4. 
Nutrition, effect of, on nerve cells, 72- 

75- 
on nerve fibres, 210. 
and enjoyment, 241, 246. 



Odour, see Smell. 



Pain (see also Enjoyment) , relation of, 
to nerve cells, 240, 242. 
uses of, 242, 243. 
Marshall on, 243. 
Patterson, on Shakspere's knowledge 

of insects, 188. 
Phrenology, 19. 

Plasticity, of nerve cells, 54, 74, 236. 
increased and extended by exercise, 

96. 
of geniuses, 107. 
Dr. Carpenter on, 107, 235. 
in relation to enjoyment, 244-246, 

251- 

Pleasure, see Enjoyment. 



Realism, 20. 



Reflex action, defined, 6. 

relation of, to consciousness, 6. 

importance of, 6, 7. 

modified by training, 7. 

examples of, 29-36. 

of eye, 32. 
Ribot, quoted, 66, 73, 74, 150, 227. 
Rolando, fissure of, 9, 10. 



Scott, early environment of, 87, 88. 
Sensation (see also Senses), tends to 
pass into action, 209-215. 
likeness of, to memory, 213, 214. 
danger of divorcing from action, 217, 
218. 
Senses, cerebral localization of, 16-19. 
training of all, necessary, 109-129, 

133. 134. 137- 
conditions of development of, no. 
one-sided development of, no, 138, 

139- 
of the master-mind, 110,111,128, 129. 
special training of, 130-148, 171-208. 
objects for cultivation of, 133, 134, 

140, 141, 143-146, 158-170, 189-207. 
first step in training, 134-136. 
deficiency in external stimulation of, 

partially atoned for by formation 

of images, 154. 
cultivation of, by images, 149-170. 
should receive training from human 

objects, 205-208. 
exercise of, develops motor tracts, 

209-212. 
training of, should incite to action, 

217, 218, 237. 
Sensori-motor action, 100. 
Sensory brain centres, 16-19. 
Sensory nerve fibres, 6. 
Shakspere, age of productivity of, 103. 
character of sensory images of, 111- 

128, 171-208. 
olfactory images of, 111-113. 
gustatory images of, 117. 
tactile, temperature, and muscular 

images of, 119-123. 
auditory images of, 123, 124. 
visual images of, 126, 127. 



258 



INDEX 



Shakspere shows appreciation of all 
sensory images, 128. 
how his senses were trained, 171-208. 
books studied by, 174, 175, 177. 
motor images of, 216. 
Sight, brain centre for, 16, 17. 

difference between sensorial and 

psychical, 17, 25. 
objects for cultivating sense of, 146. 
central nerve cells of, cultivated by 
images, 155-159. 
Sleep, not refreshing because of stimuli, 

70. 
Smell, cerebral localization of, 17, 18. 
images of, 111-116. 
special objects for cultivating, 140, 

141. 
images of, capable of recall, 154. 
central nerve cells of, cultivated by 
images, 162. 
Speech, motor centre of, 15. 
Spenser, Edmund, quoted, '45. 
Spinal cord, description of, 7, 8. 
motor nerves of, 7. 
sensory nerves of, 7. 
number of separate nerve fibres in 

anterior root of, 8. 
illustration of sections of, 8. 
Stimuli, summation of, 68, 69. 
and sleep, 70. 

necessity of, for developing nerve 
cells, 46, 47, 78. 
Suggestion, power of, 42, 218-222. 
Sully, James, on age of productivity, 

104-106. 
Sylvius, fissure of, 9, 10. 



Tadpoles, retarded development of, 

77, 78. 
Taste, cerebral localization of, 17, 18. 
images of, 117-119. 
special objects for cultivating, 143. 
central cells of, developed by images, 
161. 



Temperature, sensory images of, 122, 

123, 160, 161. 
Tennyson, accuracy of perceptions of, 
147, 148. 
quoted, 164, 168, 169. 
Touch, brain localization of, 17, 18. 
images of, 119-122. 
objects for cultivating sense of, 144, 

145- 
images for developing central nerve 
cells of, 160, 161. 
Training, see Age, Association, Brain, 
Environment, Images, Milton, 
Motor training, Nerve cells, 
Senses, Shakspere. 



Venn, quoted, 96, 101. 
Vierordt, on brain weight, 96. 
Vulpius, on development of associa- 
tion fibres, 55-57. 
chart of, 57. 

W 

Whittier, quoted, 133. 
Will, machine characteristics of, 32. 
exercise of the, in training, 39-44, 

217, 218, 237. 
how ruined, 237. 
Williams, on Shakspere's environment, 

181, 184, 186. 
Wordsworth, early environment of, 88. 

auditory image of, 125. 
Wundt, on action of nerve cells in 
memory, 150, 151, 220. 
on thinking vs. association, 230. 
on habit, 231-233. 



Youth (see also Age), in relation to 
training, 94-108. 
and productivity, 102-108. 



Ziehen, quoted, 41. 



THE CHILD AND CHILDHOOD 
IN FOLK THOUGHT. 

(THE CHILD IN PRIMITIVE CULTURE.) 

BY 

ALEXANDER FRANCIS CHAMBERLAIN, M.A., PH.D. 

Lecturer on Anthropology in Clark University; Sometime Fellow in Modern 
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JAMES MARK BALDWIN, M.A., Ph.D., 

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